Shadows Chasing Shadows
by AelysAlthea
Summary: SEQUEL to A Series of Firsts - Nico and Will had it all. Since leaving Camp, life had settled. It had eased, become comfortable, even if in many ways that comfort was slightly manic. But of course it couldn't last long. Peace never did, not for a demigod. When a quest goes wrong, Nico finds that his perfect life hangs by a thread, the likes of which can only be maintained if...
1. Chapter 1 - Being

**SUMMARY:** SEQUEL to A Series of Firsts - Nico and Will had it all. Since leaving Camp, life had settled. It had eased, become comfortable, even if in many ways that comfort was slightly manic. But of course it couldn't last long. Peace never did, not for a demigod. When a quest goes wrong, Nico finds that his perfect life hangs by a thread, the likes of which can only be maintained if he offers the ultimate sacrifice.

They'd always promised they would be there for one another. Always. Except that some promises were impossible to keep.

 **Rating:** M

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 **DISCLAIMER:** The characters, setting - vaguely - and all rights go to Rick Riodran for the absolutely FABULOUS world that he's created. Thank you so much for lending us feeble writers such a wonderful context to frolic in. I make absolutely no profit from this other than the precious reviews that my readers offer me :)

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 **A/N** : Okay, so I know I always leave these notes but I feel like this one warrants it. Yeah, this might be a sequel, but I guess you maybe don't have to read the prequels? It might probably make sense if you don't. Most of it.  
Secondly, yes, this is mature. NicoxWill mature, for both violence and sexual references, so if you don't like that... I honestly don't know how you got through the last two stories but kudos to you!And finally, this is a darker fic. A lot darker than the prior two. I'm not gonna lie - sometimes it hurt to write. Why do we torture our favourite characters so? But anyway, a heads up: violence, actions (of the mythical, questing sort), angst and misery on the horizon.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did writing it! I apologise in advance for the first chapter - a little domesticity had to arise before all hell broke loose. As always, if you like it, please take a second to leave a review. You've no idea how appreciated any sort of feedback is!

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 **Chapter 1: Being**

Nico and Will had always said they would be there to have one another's backs. That they would support each other, would defend each other, would do everything that they could to ensure one another's safety. Because that was what you did for the person you cared the most for in the world.

If only it was that easy.

Nico had never considered that such promises could breed conflict. The notion hadn't even crossed his mind, just as he'd never considered that fulfilling the most important of those promises would be so hard to keep.

At twenty-one years old, Nico would readily claim he was content. Not happy exactly – he had never really understood the meaning of 'happy'. What made someone happy? How could it possibly be a permanent state of being when it was such a fleeting emotion? He could _be_ happy, when he smiled, or when he was amused, or when he was satisfied or comfortable, but to assume happiness as a state of being? No, it didn't make sense to Nico.

Will was happy. He always said that he 'couldn't be happier' whenever anyone asked him how he was going. Whenever they visited Camp Half-Blood on the weekends, or when his college friends asked him how he was feeling, or when Nico joined him to take a trip to his mum's for the day. That he 'couldn't be happier' seemed to be a catch-cry of sorts for Will. It would have been tiresome, the same sort of reply to the tedious questioning as "Good, thanks, how are you?" except that Will always meant it. Nico could saw it, could feel the sincerity with a warmth that he felt like the sun upon his skin. Will always radiated it, even when tired, even when stressed over his studies, or when he was running from a monster or pressing upon a wound to stem his own bleeding. Nico had seen him with a hand clasped over a bone literally protruding from his arm and still, when the platoon of Apollo healers had descended upon him with nectar and ambrosia in hand, he had offered a surprisingly strong smile and claimed he was fine. And he'd meant it.

Nico had always considered Will a little bit insane for that. Maybe that Nico loved him for it just the same made him a little insane too?

In the years since Nico and Will had officially graduated from the relative safety of Camp Half-Blood, they'd fallen into a familiar routine. They weren't even all that far from Long Island, taking up residence together at a modest apartment in Cambridge so that Will could be closer to his college, and it was barely much of a jump via shadow travel for Nico to take them to the familiar grounds of camp. Will was studying to be a surgeon. A cardiologist was what he was currently aiming for, though Nico wouldn't have been surprised if he switched the focus of his sights to something else; it had wavered to neurology and paediatrics twice each before that he could recall. At only just twenty-two himself, Will was trundling down the hill of his medical degree, embedded in clinical rotations for nearly a year now as one of the youngest of his cohort. Fast-forwarding his undergraduate degree had accelerated him somewhat; there was something to be said for having connections, both with his fellow demigods in the industry – mostly children of Apollo, naturally – and with his mother as a world-famous neurosurgeon.

Nico knew without being told that Will was loving every second of it, even if it did exhaust him. Even if it meant that Nico saw decidedly less of him than he would have perhaps preferred. Not for any intentional detachedness or dismissiveness of Will's, but through simple necessity. He was swamped beneath a combination of practical hours and theoretical studies in the form of revision, reports, write-ups and essays that kept him up till all hours with his head buried in his textbooks and fingers to his laptop. Nico had more than once had to take a trip onto his college campus to drag him home, whinging and moaning and objecting the entire way though falling to sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

What would Will do without him? Honestly…

But even seeing how exhausted his boyfriend was, even begrudging the hours that they were kept apart from one another, Nico was happy for him. And proud of him, as he so rarely admitted. It was a hell of a mission Will signed himself up to, that was for sure; he'd would go into his residency straight out of college and that would last for another three years at the least. A _hell_ of a mission.

In contrast, Nico… Nico was about as confident in his own future, in his own mission, as a fish out of water. Not that he really cared, except when Will would bring it up to ask out of simple curiosity. Each time, Nico would sigh and roll his eyes while wishing that he had something more concrete to tell Will other than a shrug and a dismissal of his query.

It didn't matter. Not really. Because Nico was content. And if it wasn't the perfect and intangible 'happy', then it was about as close as he figured he'd come.

He strode along the central promenade of the college, drifting past the laughing and chattering students as he made his way towards the impressive, stately buildings of red brick and white trimming. Harvard was upstanding, the _most_ upstanding, and prestigious of colleges. It had the top MD course, so of course Will would go to it. If he could, which, naturally, he could. The support of Naomi Solace went far, but even without that Will was brilliant enough to make a name for himself. He would stand out amongst the ranks of plebeians for more than just his bright hair.

Skirting the lake sprawling across the grounds and making his way along the green, vibrant with the colour of spring, Nico flipped his phone from his pocket and keyed in a call to Will. He didn't even bother to put it to his ear, expecting with almost absolute certainty that it would ring out. He wasn't disappointed in that regard and, with a long-suffering sigh, Nico made his way through the double doors of the central, looming building.

He knew his way to the library almost as well as he did the layout of Camp Half-Blood. Nico had traversed the halls enough times in search of his boyfriend in the past two and a half years to grow accustomed to the nooks and crannies, the shortcuts that could truncate his trek by halves. Long hallways dotted with students, rich with doors that led into auditoriums and less expansive tutorial and conference rooms; Nico had poked his head into most of them upon numerous occasions in the hours he'd spent at Harvard University. And he didn't even attend.

He wandered through the doors to the library with hands in pockets, into the yawning silence broken only my muted whispers and the creak of chairs, the click of computers and the tap of keys. A pause in set was all Nico needed to scan the vast room of domed ceilings and multistorey shelving stacked with regal tomes dusted and swept clean of the cling of dust that such a space would typically tend to acquire.

Not in Harvard, though. Dust was too scared to settle in Harvard's library, floating in ever-falling drifts in each beam of light peering radiance through the windows. Nico had to wonder if even monsters would fear to tread into its halls for fear of staining the floors. He'd certainly never seen any tempt fate before, for which he was sincerely grateful. An all-out brawl in the middle of the college probably wouldn't do Will's reputation any favours.

Nico spotted Will with the ease that he always did. It was something of a sixth sense they shared, though whether demigod-related or otherwise he didn't know. When he stepped into a room, Nico would always know where Will was.

He made his way down the aisle between desks, past the whispering students frowning in concentration as they fell into deep debate with their partners, bypassing silent workers whose fingers tap-danced across the keys of their computers or scribbled in their notebooks so fast that their movements appeared to be reminiscent more of spasms and twitches than deliberate motions. Nico stopped at the desk that Will had monopolised, textbooks and workbooks, laptop and calculator spread around him with a greater capacity than anyone should possess homework. He propped himself against the edge of the desk, folded his arms and waited.

It took Will a full three minutes and thirteen seconds to notice that Nico had arrived. He was intently focused upon his readings, scratching his head idly and frowning in a way that Nico found more amusing than anything else. He'd long since overcome his annoyance with Will's focused intensity when he was working.

Will blinked up from his textbook towards his computer and started slightly when he noticed Nico sitting before him. In an instant a grin spread across his face and he practically jumped to his feet to lean across the desk and press a kiss upon Nico's cheek. It was that response more than anything else that assuaged Nico's disgruntlement over being ignored.

"Sorry! Sorry, I was concentrating –"

"I know," Nico said with a casual shrug. "It's probably the same reason that you didn't pick up my call. Calls."

"You called?"

"Only twice."

Will winced. "Sorry. I always turn my phone on silent when I have a tute with Belinda. I think she sort of has a prejudice against them. Always goes on about how people are on them too much these days."

"True enough. Is she old? That'd explain it."

"She couldn't be more than forty."

"Well, she's got no excuse then."

Will smirked his crooked grin. "Yeah, but she's sort of into the whole meditative, anti-technology-unless-absolutely-necessary kind of lifestyle."

"And she's a… isn't she a radiographer?" Nico raised an eyebrow.

"Ironic, right?"

Shaking his head, Nico crossed his legs and settled himself more comfortably onto the edge of the desk. He tilted his head towards Will's spread of books and pages. "You nearly done for the day? I can wait if you'd like."

"Where did this newfound patience come from?" Will teased, already reaching over to begin folding his books closed and stacking them atop one another. At Nico's hooded, silent stare of reply he shook his head. "No, it's all good. I'm keen to get going and I've done enough for the day."

"What, no more study to do?"

"There's always study."

"And you wonder why I avoid any form of formal education?"

Will snorted. "No, I don't wonder. Anyone who _does_ go to college is insane. Why we put ourselves through such unnecessary torture is a mystery to me."

"You love it. Don't lie." Nico said, straightening from his slouch as Will swept his books into his then-bulging pair of bags and picked up his laptop with a closing snap. "Here, give me something to carry. You'll break your back."

"I'm fine," Will shrugged, fighting Nico for a moment until he was relieved of one of his burdens. "And you're right. Absolutely. I wouldn't have it any other way."

They made their way out of the library, chatting idly as Nico asked him to fill him in with his classes for the day. There were only two, one in the morning and the other six hours later, but Will spent the entirety of the rest of the day with his head buried in his books.

"That sounds engrossing," Nico said, raising his eyebrows at Will's jargon-rich description of his afternoon lecture.

Will shrugged awkwardly beneath the weight of his bag. "It's dry, yeah, but that doesn't mean it's not interesting."

"I never said it wasn't."

"Yeah, but you insinuated it."

"You read me like a book."

"Hm." Will scrunched his nose in distaste. "No, thanks. I'm all read out for the day. How about you?"

"Am I read out?"

"No, you idiot," Will grinned, looping an arm around Nico's shoulders. Nico made his customary attempt to dislodge the one-armed hug before giving up as usual. "What have you been up to?"

"Today, or since I last saw you?" Nico asked, glancing up at him. Will had always been just a few inches taller than him, but he found he didn't mind it so much these days. It would be weirder if Nico didn't have to look up at him a little.

"I saw you yesterday afternoon before you went to work," Will said, raising an eyebrow. "Other than going over to Mickey's I'd have assumed you'd just been sleeping." He paused, then became faintly reproving. "You did sleep, didn't you?"

Nico sighed long-sufferingly, turning his gaze from Will's slight frown to scan across the university grounds. Will was eternally nit-picky about such things. "Yes, I am sleeping."

"How much, exactly? You still keeping a log?"

"You actually expect me to remember to do something like that? Me?"

"If you're trying to convince me that you have questionable memory skills, it's not going to work. You have the memory of an elephant."

Nico turned back to him and raised an eyebrow. "Are you calling me an elephant?"

Will's reproving frown broke momentarily. "Obviously. A big, hulking elephant with massive ears and a ridiculously long nose."

Nico scowled. "I don't have big ears or a big nose. You shouldn't say things like that. I could get self-conscious."

"Of course you don't," Will grinned crookedly. He leant towards Nico and pressed a kiss to his temple. "They're perfectly within the normal range of size and structure. Trust me, I'm a doctor."

Nico attempted to maintain his scowl for a moment longer before it faded. It was all a farce anyway; the occasions that Nico was truly angry with Will were few and far between these days. "Stupid Quack."

Will laughed into his head for a moment. "Always. _Your_ Quack, don't you forget." Then his amusement faded. "Seriously, though. We tend to miss each other half of the time between work and college. How are you sleeping?"

Nico shrugged. He could divert Will's attention to something else – Will usually realised when he did it intentionally but just as often let it slide – but though it was tiresome at times he knew Will's questions came from a place of actual concern. And even if he was truly worried, he would only make suggestions; Will knew not to push him with orders and demands. "Usually about five hours a night when I sleep."

"You still get nightmares?"

"Yeah, sometimes. Same as usual – just bits and pieces that I mostly forget when I wake up – but a lot of the time I think it's more habit than anything. Not sleeping that is."

"Have you considered going to a sleep specialist again?" Will asked, trying and failing to pretend he wasn't as concerned as he aways was.

"After last time?" Nico shook his head. The memory of the overly intrusive and touchy-feely personal psychologist he'd seen last time was somewhat scarring. "No thanks. It's not a problem now, really. I slept last night. A little."

"How late were you at Mickey's?" Will asked, and Nico saw it as a deliberate attempt to move himself on from the topic that concerned him. Will was a worrier, but Nico's adamant refusal to _let_ him worry about him had pushed him into at least attempting to smother his reflexive response.

"Till about two. I got distracted."

"Let me guess. You got lost in a computer?" Will asked, a more genuine attempt at a smile spreading across his face.

Nico shook his head, rolling his eyes at the memory. "You should have seen it. I don't know what he does to his electronics - use them for fire fuel? I honestly don't know – but it's all fine now. I cleaned it all out and it's up and running again now."

Will jostled his captured shoulder affectionately. "You little genius, you."

"Hardly a genius," Nico shrugged. "It's easy to put pieces together and pull them apart when you actually look at it and think about it. It makes sense, you know?"

"Not to me," Will said, shaking his head as they stepped from the university ground and onto the roadside. Cars trundled past largely unnoticed. "I couldn't get so far as cleaning the dust out my laptop without blowing something up. Who'd have thought that it was _you,_ the one who'd never used a computer six years ago?"

"As you keep reminding me. It's useful knowing that sort of thing, though."

"As I remember telling you six years ago," Will pointed out.

"No, I meant that it pays well."

"Ah. Yes, well, that it does," Will nodded. "What else?"

It took Nico a moment to recall what he was talking about. "What else? Um… Some family down in Quincy called about an exorcism."

"Was it an actual exorcism that they needed?"

Nico shook his head, sighing his exasperation that was more forced than genuine. "Of course not. Just a bit of a ghoul problem, some clinging soul making noise around Witching Hour. It wasn't even a strong one; I'm surprised they heard anything through the Mist. It was alright, though, because Chiara was visiting her little half-brother down there and I actually bumped into her. I paid them a visit; her brother's only seven but she's got him doing sword practice already and asked if I could help out."

"I didn't know Chiara was swinging by for visit," Will commented mildly. "She should have stopped by to say hi. I didn't even know she had a younger brother up around here. Tyche claimed him before he even got to camp?"

Nico nodded. "Yeah, surprisingly enough, but he's not going for a couple of years I don't think. His dad's a martial arts practitioner and seems to think he's capable of protecting his kid from monsters."

"Reminds me of Venus Hannon's dad," Will muttered.

Nico cringed slightly. "Don't remind me. That girl still annoys the crap out of me."

"Me too, actually."

"Hey, you're not allowed to say things like that," Nico rebuked, elbowing Will in the side.

"Why not?"

"Because you're the _nice_ one out of the two of us. Butter wouldn't melt in your mouth kind of nice."

"Maybe for appearances sake," Will smirked. "You're the cinnamon roll out of the two of us."

"Cinnamon roll? Hardly."

"Definitely."

"You're deceiving yourself."

"Stop trying to escape reality, Nico." Will taunted, ignoring Nico's elbow in his side once more even as it nearly caused him to stumble and lose his hold around Nico's shoulders. "We all know you're the first to jump to help when someone calls. At Camp Half-Blood or New Rome. Don't think I've forgotten what happened with the third cohort got stuck in that rut in Toronto last year."

"Please don't remind me," Nico said with a wince.

"Cinnamon roll," Will grinned.

Nico pointedly ignored him as he turned instead towards listing what he'd happened across for the rest of the day. They wandered down the side main road, making their way towards the nearest bus stop because it was always easier to simply catch public transport to campus than look for a parking spot for Will's admittedly shitbox of a car. They settled themselves to wait beneath the overhang as Will prompted Nico to continue.

He gave a quick rundown of the day, of visiting his sort of friend Jon Browning at the graveyard he worked at – the man had a susceptibility for seeing through the Mist and had seen some strange things amongst the tombstones, of which Nico, in passing, had reassured him was entirely normal and largely harmless – to giving Hazel a call, to wagering the neighbours teenager into doing his homework by absolutely pulverising him in a video game to taking a call from Eve Novak that had lasted a solid hour of the little girl talking his ear off.

"She's alright for a six year old," Nico said, slouching with his back against Will's shoulder and legs stretching along the bus stop bench as he flicked through his phone. Phones would always be dangerous for a demigod to use, even Leo's remodelled ones, but they were useful for music nonetheless. "Pretty good, actually, but Gods she's got a mouth on her."

"You still have to introduce me to her sometime," Will said, crunching his way through a packet of trail mix and graciously sending any raisins Nico's way. "I feel like I'm missing out on an integral part of your social life by not meeting your god-daughter."

"She's not my god-daughter."

"Only because Melissa and Nikola just started to get to know you _after_ they'd already picked one for her." Will shook his head, munching loudly as he leant forwards slightly to peer down the road for any approaching buses. "Seriously, I don't know how you managed to integrate yourself into their family so well. I've never even met these people but it's obvious that they adore you."

"I don't know how either, honestly," Nico admitted, eyes still downcast to his phone. "I'm not complaining though. I mean, for most people I'd rather poke their eye out than listen to them natter on for an hour about – I honestly don't even know, something about kindergarten and star of the week or something. But Eve just seems sort of cute."

"Maybe you should get a job looking after kids," Will suggested. "Not that you seem to have all that much time to pick up another job. How you manage to fit so much in your day is a mystery to me."

"How _I_ manage so much?" Nico tilted his head backwards to peer at Will's face upside down and raised an eyebrow. "Says the medicine student drowning under homework and exams and hours doing your rotations –"

"I'm hardly drowning," Will said with a smile that was just a little weary. Nico didn't believe him for a second.

Shaking his head, he accepted the raisins Will handed to him and turned back to his phone. "I don't think I'd want to work with kids anyway. I can't stand screaming – does my head in."

"You seem to like Eve enough," Will pointed out. "And really, the fact that you sort of stare a little longingly at any kid you see makes me wonder if you're sort of turning into a mother hen."

Nico drove his elbow backwards into Will's ribs hard enough for him to lose his breath with a faintly pained laughed. "If anyone's clucky out of the two of us it would be you," was all he muttered in reply.

Will was right, though Nico wouldn't admit it. Not about the 'mother hen' business or anything, but the fact that Nico couldn't help but stare at kids. It might even seem a little creepy sometimes – Nico tried to hide that he did it, but most of the time couldn't help it. It wasn't because he was considering abducting them as an overly concerned passer-by might assume, or that he felt any particular inclination to be _around_ children. Other than Eve, of course, but the little girl who reminded him so much of his own long-lost sister was a special case.

No, Nico didn't particularly like kids. It was just… they were so much cleaner than adults. Or, more correctly, they didn't smell of death.

Everyone had that aura to them. In most people it was barely apparent, like the faint, lingering traces of day old perfume that could be smelt only when the wind turned just the right way. Faint, but still there. Even Will had it sometimes, which was a reality that sickened Nico to even contemplate. There was no avoiding it, though. The older a person became, the stronger that scent grew. In the old, or the frail, or the sickly, it was the strongest, like an ominous cloud settling right above them and them only.

Everyone had it, though. Everyone except children. Children, who were so full of life and joy and simple enthusiasm for living that it drove away the shadows of death that were as familiar to Nico as the backs of his own hands. And Nico… for all that he was intimately familiar with death, Nico hated it. He hated the reminder of what it was, of what hung suspended in the future of every living thing. That hatred was why he looked at children, with what was apparently wistfulness if Will was to be believed.

"You alright?"

Will's voice drew Nico back from his thoughts. He tilted his head back to glance up at him once more, meeting his familiar, multihued eyes that peered down at him curiously. Nico shrugged, deliberately turning his gaze down to the phone he'd dazedly neglected in his hands. "Yeah, just tossing up between listening Gregory Porter and Esperanza Spalding. Decisions, decisions…"

Will gave an appreciative murmur, slinging an arm over Nico's shoulders to crane his gaze over his head more easily. "You've got the _Junjo_ album, haven't you?"

"Of course I do. What do you take me for?" Nico replied, flicking through the playlist to the unvoiced request. The quiet lull of modern jazz soon rippled through the bus shelter, to the evident bemusement and subsequent appreciation of the elderly man who was only other commuter sitting on the bench. Nico and Will sat in comfortable, temporary muteness, picking through Will's trail mix as they waited.

"We'll just swing by home to dump my stuff before heading to camp, then?" Will suggested when, eventually, the puttering hulk of the bus drew up before them. He rose to his feet, urging Nico to do the same.

Nico, shrugged, falling into line behind the old man as he ambled slowly up the bus steps. "Yeah, sure. Whatever. It's not like there's any rush." There was never any rush. Camp Half-Blood welcomed them every weekend that they visited like returning soldiers, with appreciative bellows of welcome and far too much enthusiasm, regardless of the fact that neither of them had been on a real, oracle-designated quest for years.

"You sure you're right to shadow travel us that far?" Will asked. Typically. Expectedly. As he always did. Will had never quite become comfortable with Nico's use of the shadows, even if he had grown to admit to their usefulness.

Nico didn't begrudge him asking anymore. It was almost nice to be so considered. Even if Will's care was baseless and he didn't even have to think to reply. "Of course."

"Just checking."

"I know," Nico replied, stepping onto the bus behind him. Will always would.

* * *

It hit Nico soon as he shadowed into the middle camp, shaking off the brief bout of tentative weariness that he still got these days. He knew immediately that something was wrong, and that was even before he saw the distant figure of Chiron turn tail from a group of panicky demigods to head towards the Big House at a gallop. There was something in the air, tension bordering on hysteria, which immediately set Nico on edge and his fingers to reaching unconsciously to the sword hilt at his shoulder.

He glanced at Will, meeting him worried frown to worried frown, and without a word they both leapt into a run in Chiron's wake. Nico didn't pause at the steps, didn't slow to knock on the door that hadn't completely slammed shut yet, but burst straight through instead, bypassing the infirmary and the stairs up to the attic to follow the sound of raised voices to the rec room. He stepped inside the door with Will on his tail just as Chiron's voice, raised in uncharacteristic volume, called for silence.

"Everyone, please! We'll get nowhere if this continues. We must remain calm."

The room broke off its chattering and fell into tense silence. It was overflowing with demigods crowded around the central ping-pong table, but from what Nico could see they were just the counsellors. Most he knew only distantly, having had little to do with counsel meeting in the years since he'd left camp and the turnover of counsellors being fairly regular when demigods came of an age where the inclination to stretch their wings and soar away grew too great. He saw a very worried looking Nyssa of Hephaestus, Alice Miyazawa from Hermes, Tilly Bodwick from Athena and Mikael Somes of Hebes, but barely spared a moment's glance for the rest of them. His attention snapped to Chiron instead.

"What happened?" Will, standing at his side, spoke before Nico could himself, voice ringing with sharp demand.

In Chiron's enforced silence, all eyes turned towards their entry. Nico barely registered that most flooded with relief. He affixed Chiron with an unblinking stare, urging him to answer Will's question.

Chiron wasn't bereft of his own touch of relief as he glanced towards them, though the thick presence of concern still tightened the lines of his ageing face. Arms folding across his chess, appearing more an act to stabilise himself than in stubbornness or determination, he nodded his head in brief greeting before launching directly into an explanation.

"We received a distress call from one of our quests."

"Who?" Nico asked immediately.

"A party of five – Riley, Fionn, Huang, Josef and Harley. Their Iris-message was cut out halfway through." Chiron's eyes tightened. "That was nearly ten minutes ago."

 _Ah. I guess that's why Nyssa's looking the most worried, what with Harley being involved and everything,_ Nico thought. He instantly discarded the observation as irrelevant. "Did they tell you what was happening?"

"Chimaera," Nyssa said before Chiron could reply. Nico glanced towards her, to the sight of her chewing on her lip hard enough to pierce the skin. "Chimaera with a horde of lesser monsters."

"From what we could make out, it sounded like they'd already acquired injuries and it wasn't looking good," Sebastian Sean, son of Nemesis, glared at the floor at his feet as though accusing it of a wrong. "That was about all we could get before the message cut out."

"A chimaera?" Will asked, sucking in a breath in a hiss. "That's bad. But surely it's not –"

"Not _a_ Chimaera," Nyssa interrupted him, voice tight and grim. " _The_ Chimaera. As in son of Echidna, Chimaera."

It was Nico's turn to hiss. Echidna had more kids that could be counted, but most of them were of a class with every other monster. But there were some few who were of a class of deadly above and beyond the rest, hanging around the danger level of giants for their destructive capabilities. Nico remembered his brief confrontation with the Nemean Lion, another of Echidna's deadlier brood, both the first time years before and then the second not a month ago when he had actually managed to vanquish it. Somehow, impossibly, to defeat it. It had been a miracle that his sword had somehow, _impossibly_ , managed to pierce the impregnable skin. Neither were confrontations he was likely to forget any time soon.

"Shit," Will cursed quietly. He shook his head and Nico saw his hands clench at his sides. "Shit. And with its own horde of groupies, too?"

Chiron nodded. "They are not an old group – Fionn is the eldest of them but we know she lacks the aggressive capacities of most demigods, to tell of the truth where it stands. They aren't equipped to face such a foe."

"Which is why we need to go," Nyssa cut in, her voice angry in her desperation. "We know where they are, so we need to go and help them. _Now_. If I could use the Labyrinth, I could get there in no time –"

"No," Chiron cut her off harshly, with a fierceness he was usually so devoid of. "You will not journey into the Labyrinth with such intentions. You'll surely become lost."

"But I have to," Nyssa cried, more pleading than demanding now. Her lip was actually bleeding now for how fiercely she was biting it. "I can't let Harley –"

"You know where they are?" Will cut in, his voice sharp once more yet soft in a way that somehow managed to provoke not the slightest anger from anyone. "You know their coordinates?"

Chiron made to reply, and Nico go the impression that he was more likely to caution them than to give Will what he asked for, but Nyssa, her voice warbling with panic even more now, spoke before he had a chance. "They're down near Atlantic City. Wharton State Forest."

"Where?" Nico asked. "Where exactly?"

"I don't know, just that –"

"Where did they say? As close as you can get, Nyssa," Nico cut into her hysterics.

Tugging at the collar of her shirt as though she meant to choke herself, Nyssa finally actually turned her attention directly to Nico. Her gaze was as pleading as her voice. "Harley said they were a little ways down a road from a long-running drag racing strip. _Acto_ or something-or-other. I don't –"

"Will." Nico turned towards his boyfriend, ignoring the continued broken words of Nyssa that Tilly at her side attempted to soothe. He didn't ask, simply posing the statement of what they had to do.

Will turned towards him, a slight frown touching his brow. "Atlantic City's a ways down. You think you can make it that far after travelling today already?"

"Of course," Nico nodded shortly, hoping he was speaking the truth rather than a hope.

'Will, Nico," Chiron interrupted guardedly. "Don't just go charging into this. We are all concerned about them, but we need to think this through –"

"We can think later, Chiron," Nico interrupted. "I don't think the kids really have the time for us to wait."

"You'll need reinforcements besides just the two of you," Chiron objected, taking a clopping step forwards and dropping his crossed hands to lean upon the pin-pong table. He had to nearly bend double to do so and he was still taller than most in the room. "You're more than competent fighters the both of you, but this is _the_ Chimaera."

"You've already said that," Nico replied, turning from the room.

"Nico – "

"We'll send a message as soon as we can. Reinforcements would be great," Will called over his shoulders as he too turned, barely sparing the effort to make his tone cordial as they departed the Rec Room.

"Will, Nico, wait -!"

Nico didn't wait. He didn't even wait until they made it to the door of the Big House before he grabbed Will's hand, drew his shadows around them and threw them both from the House. A moment before they disappeared, he caught the rising exclamations of the counsellors behind them, Chiron's voice still calling. Then it was gone.

* * *

They found the raceway easily enough. It would have been harder to miss. The single main road leading away from it and the small collection of buildings and houses that barely constituted a town, the outskirts of Acto, was similarly hard to bypass. Sword and bow drawn respectively, Nico and Will set off at a fast run down the bitumen leading into the forest. The clean warmth of spring dampened the air, bursting greenery to life, but Nico hardly saw any of it.

The fight wasn't as far away as he'd expected. Upon their approach, they could hear it from the sound of shrieks and roars, of bellows and cries of pain drowned out by strange yipping sounds almost reminiscent of a dog. As always, Nico wondered what it would have looked like to people through the Mist. An animal attack? Surely not, for the Chimaera and it' twisted accompaniments would be far too large for simple 'animals'. They didn't look anything like them either, Nico acknowledged when they burst upon the scene. There were at least a dozen of them, maybe two-dozen, with the dusty remains of countless others scattered blanketing the forest floor like thick ash. Nico wasn't sure how many they were, nor _what_ they even were, and he didn't pause to alleviate his ignorance. Sword poised, he charged from the roadside down the rocky slope dotted sparsely with trees towards the demigods stumbling in retreat from their enormous foe. The sound of Will's bow _twang_ ed alongside him.

The hissing swing of his sword split the air and Nico fell into battle.

The smaller ones were twisted horrors of monsters. The mish-mash product of goats and felines, some with forked tongue spitting from their mouths, others with three hooves and one paw. Some resembled miniature lions but for the long, curving horns sprouting from their heads. They were the size of a mountain lion, or a giant, mutant goat, or an anaconda on steroids. Nico fell upon them without a second thought, adrenaline coursing through him and erasing any fear that may have arisen drawing their attention with a shout. He smashed a pair of lion-goats into dust with his first of contact, Will's arrow dissipating a third, before launching himself further into the fray.

The kids were there. Nico saw them, barely registering them. They were a bloody mess – literally bloody, with dark streaks of gore matting their clothes and limping in an attempt to retreat while still defending themselves. Scratches that looked to be the product of a clawed attack painted Fionn's face and Huang was nearly unconscious and leaning heavily upon Riley's arm as she dragged him alongside her with her sword still raised. Harley, the burly teen standing before them defensively with his double short swords raised, was panting heavily with dirt, sweat and his own mess of blood thickly lathering his hair. At his side, little Josef was smacking aside the lion-goats with his javelin, dark eyes blown wide less with fading adrenaline and more in rising fear.

Before them loomed the Chimaera.

Nico barely had time to take stock of the creature, twisting and slicing through the small fry that turned towards him as he was. Will sprung from the roadside after unleashing a flurry of arrows to stand against his back, tapping his bow into a morphing quarterstaff in an instant and splintering monsters with each smack of his weapon. Nico did notice its size, however, the elephant mass of muscle and fur, scales and mane impossible to miss. He noticed the tawny pelt barely marred with gashes the creature appeared not to notice, the lions head wide and yawning with ivory curves of teeth bubbled with saliva. He noticed the long length of snake that reared its head from the creature's tail and darted a scorpion-like strike at Josef, who stumbled backwards with a cry, the goat's head with its towering coils of horns as it swung from the chimaera's shoulder in an attempt to spear Harley. Harley noticed too late, taking a nick that drew his own cry forth and nearly stumbled him from his feet.

The kids were exhausted, though whether from the fight or from something that had happened before Nico didn't know. That much was evident. Fionn – despite the trio of deep gauges that marred her cheek, dripping tears of blood – appeared the most lucid, the least terrified, but even she was visibly panting and trembling. Nico made a step towards them, only to be waylaid by a lion with snake-eyes and horns.

"Will!" He called over his shoulder. "The kids –"

"I'm on it." Will spun in a windmilling twirl of his quarterstaff, pulverising the giant snake hosting two leonine front legs with a single swipe to the head. He glanced towards Nico, towards the Chimaera and the demigods beyond. "You got the rest of these little bastards if I take him?"

Nico didn't want that. He'd rather be the one to face the Chimaera, the creature from nightmares that was supposed to be nearly as indestructible as its brother, the Nemean Lion. But even as the thought made itself known, a pair of identical, heavy-jawed goats the size of small tractors charged towards him and it was all he could do to nod and call a sharp, "Go!" over his shoulder.

Will leapt past him, vaulting over one of the tractor-goat's backs as though it were nothing but a three foot wall and tearing towards the Chimaera and the stumbling demigods. Nico took a swipe at the monster as it turned in angry confusion to its vaulter, piercing it behind the ear in an attempt to draw its attention before striking it to the ground with a heavy, overhanded blow that burst it into a spray of dust. He spun an instant later to face the charge of another of its siblings.

Slicing and cutting, ducking and leaping, parrying the swipes of clawed hands, the kicks of splintered hooves, the darting strikes of the snakes' heads. Nico fell to the floor and rolled as often as he bounded over the backs of his wounded foes. He showed no mercy, felt only determination and need, to erase the monsters in their threat against his cousins and fellow demigods. There was no mercy necessary for such mindless killing machines. They attacked for no other reason that to attack.

Nico hated them. He hated that they had killed some of what was _his_.

He didn't feel fear. He barely even felt satisfaction when the number rapidly dwindled, focusing their attention solely upon Nico as he whipped around trees to spring forwards and drive his sword through ribs. He didn't feel the moment a lion dug its claws briefly into his thigh, only noticed enough to direct his downward slice towards the monster's leg followed by its head. He chance a dive into his shadows to escape a spit of venom, in that brief, disorienting and momentary disappearance that he'd barely had the chance to practice since the first time he'd tried it years before, and reappeared behind the creature to hack it into dust. The nick of a goat's horn was disregarded as a minor injury, the bruise of a collision negligible, and Nico soon found himself standing before the last, prowling monster that looked nothing if not a miniature of its forefather standing beyond it, barely within Nico's field of vision. The padding step of its paws as it prowled forth, growl rumbling from its throat, kicked the dust of its vanquished siblings into the air in little plumes.

Nico took a deep, steadying breath. He raised his sword. Then he charged, black blade cleaving through the air with the miniature chimaera as his target.

He heard the scream on the edges of his consciousness. Heard it and barely heeded it but to notice its sound. Nico's attention was focused upon destroying the last of the smaller monsters, and it was only when, after a brief scuffle that he thought might have broken at least one of his fingers from the goat-head's bite, obliterated it into the dust of its fellows that he truly registered it. Then he turned towards the Chimaera, towards Will and the younger demigods. The sight froze his blood in his very veins.

The Chimaera was brutalised. Will had done his job almost to completion, with the goat's head hanging limply, tongue lolling forth and a wound to the skull seeping blood through its dark fur. The snake of the monster's tail fell just as uselessly, split nearly its whole, scaled length by the white protrusions of bones that poked through its skin. The lion's head was still mobile, still awake and roaring, but even that looked a mess. Its jaw was skewed as though dislocated and hanging at an odd angle. But it still approached the demigods, because Will –

Will lay on the ground, tossed aside like a rag doll and with as little grace. His quarterstaff had tumbled from his grasp to fall to the ground just beyond him. His jacket was ripped as though clawed, half fallen from his shoulders and tangled around his arms, and jeaned legs sprawled at an unnaturally angled limpness. But it was his head, the bloody mess that dyed his hair red from gold, pulsing forth tendrils of dark scarlet down his forehead, that was the horror.

Nico saw blackness. Then he saw vivid white, then blurred focus that sharpened only onto Will's face. He felt cold, then flushed hot, couldn't breath, then breathed too much. He barely even felt the sword in his hand, could have been weaponless and collapsing to the ground for all he knew. At first Nico couldn't move. Not even when Harley's cry of distress at tumbling to the ground before the Chimaera filtered into his ears.

Will was…

 _Will_ … _oh Gods, Will was… Will couldn't be…_

Will _couldn't be…_

Nico snapped. He flew into a frenzy. He barely even realised his legs were moving until he was upon the Chimaera – literally upon, somehow clambered onto its back and driving his sword down into its shoulders with a double-handed thrust. The beast bellowed, lion's head tossing backwards as it reared in objection. Nico was thrown from his standing seat, tossed to the ground to land with a painful roll that crunched something, only to spring at the monster a second later. He raised his sword, breath gasping, vision filled with only the hulking mass of the turning Chimaera and the memory of Will's bloodied face before his eyes. He didn't think. He couldn't think. He charged.

There was no finesse to his movements, no skill despite his years of practice. Nico swung and struck, sliced and spun and hacked and parried as the lion lumbered backwards then lurched forwards with its own strikes. Claws met black Stygian iron, hissing as the contact drew ear-splitting shrieks. Nico scored a strike to the snout, sliced along the Chimaera's swinging foreleg, caught a crushing blow to the shoulder that was worth it for the piercing thrust he managed in return. The Chimaera… for whatever reason it seemed almost wary of him, wary in a way that monsters rarely exhibited. Nico didn't care why, didn't pause to contemplate the slight hesitancy between each of the creature's attacks. He was winning, or he was losing, he couldn't tell. Didn't know and didn't care, couldn't make it out until –

The Chimaera leapt. On shambling limbs it leapt, throwing its full body into a cannoning effort that aimed to crush Nico where he stood. It managed it too, and Nico barely had the chance to raise his sword to spit the monster as it fell before he was smothered against the ground.

His breath left him. His head cracked against something hard jarringly, painfully, and the weight of the Chimaera atop him was asphyxiating, crushing, breaking. Nico could only think to maintain his grip on his sword, to twist and lodge deeper, even as his mind chanted _Die, you fucking bastard, die – Will, Gods, Will – die! How_ dare _you!_

The Chimaera groaned. It splattered a dribble of red-tinged saliva onto Nico's face as its snout suspended upon him. It voiced something, Nico thought, something intelligible, but though his ears heard the words, catalogued them, his mind didn't understand. There was no room for understanding, no space for anything but the two things that Nico needed _now,_ more than _anything, now, he needed it now!_

He needed Will. And he needed the Chimaera _dead_.

The monster stopped talking. It stopped with a heavy, groaning sigh, then, crackling like a limb falling from a tree, its weight fell more completely. Crushing, completely smothering, only to burst into dust an instant before the broad, tawny snout, the twisted whispers and stinking breath, could fall upon Nico's face.

Nico's breath returned in a rush, only to fall into coughs as he inhaled the smoky, golden dust. His legs hurt from the abrupt abuse of too much weight loaded upon him that was abruptly relieved, his chest ached as his lungs protested to the foreign invasion of dust as much as oxygen, and his eyes dimmed for a moment before he could blink them into clarity. He hurt. He hurt a lot, so much and in so many different places. And he didn't consider a single one of them.

Movement was impossible, should have been impossible, but Nico somehow managed. His hands were wrapped in a tight, unshakeable grasp around the hilt of his sword, but he somehow pried them off to a detached scream of pain – broken, probably, at least one of his fingers. In a roll, Nico clambered onto all fours and, coughing through the dust and the continued onslaught of air, he scrambled as fast as his screaming limbs could carry him.

He didn't spare a thought for the younger demigods. Nico didn't even look in their direction. His gaze was focused solely upon Will's lifeless figure as he dragged himself through the dust, over the jagged rocks scattering the thinly-forested floor that speared abusively at his palms. He fell upon him with something that could have been a sob but he wasn't sure. Nico didn't care to think about it.

Will's face was a spider web of bloody streaks marring pale skin. His eyes were closed, his expression lax, and he flopped unresponsively when Nico grabbed his arm, locked broken fingers into his jacket, croaked out his name. Something in the back of his mind told him to be careful, to watch his neck, to keep his spine straight, but Nico hardly heard it. He had a mind only to cry out to Will, again and again with discordant words as his fingers clutched at his wrist, his shirt, touched his face and drew down to his neck in a desperate search for a heartbeat. It was horrible, the limpness, the blood, that Will _wouldn't wake up._

But worst of all, the absolute worst, was the thick aura of death that hung around him. It blanketed Will and clogged Nico's senses in stifling darkness.

 _No, no, no, this can't be happening. Please, oh please, please be alive, please have a pulse, oh Gods, please don't be dead, please –_

Nico's hands were shaking so hard that he couldn't hold them still long enough to check. He was wrought with panic, with mind-encompassing terror and rage, distraught with uselessness and hopelessness, and the only words that tumbled from his mouth were Will's name. Or maybe he spoke his thoughts, he wasn't sure. Will's face was a blurred image of red and pale gold, his freckles morphing together in… tears? Was Nico crying? He didn't know and he didn't care.

Long, precious moments passed. Long, infuriating, horrifying moments in which Nico gasped over Will's limp form, his fingers shaking too fiercely for him to feel anything, to know for certain whether he even _could_ feel anything at Will's neck. Until he did. It was in such a faint, butterfly flutter of thumps that Nico wasn't even sure if it was there at all.

He didn't care. That vague flutter was a chance. Throwing himself into jerking action once more, Nico's hands dove to Will's jacket pocket, to the zip-lock bags of ambrosia that Will _always_ carried for no other reason than because he could. He dropped half of the little cubes of what looked like chocolate upon the forest floor before his mangled fingers managing to kept a hold of one long enough to stuff it into Will's mouth. He held Will's jaw closed for barely a second before considering he'd waited long enough. He couldn't wait any more.

Will was bigger than Nico. He'd always been a little taller, had more of an archer's build across the shoulders. That discrepancy hardly made an ounce of difference when Nico slung him over his back. It didn't matter that he weighed more than Nico did himself, that even on a good day – which Nico's legs were shrieking at him that it definitely wasn't – he would have struggled to lift him.

But he did. Nico managed, and when he rose to standing with his _not-dead-he-wasn't-dead_ boyfriend hanging limply over his shoulder, it was to grab at his shadows without a second thought. He barely even noticed the exhausted, damaged demigods that had ringed around him; Huang was nearly unconscious at Riley's shoulder, Harley pale and still breathing heavily and Josef trembling like as though he was having a fit. He barely noticed the wide-eyed yet determined nod that Fionn gave him, the mouthed " _Go_ " that gave him permission where he sought none.

Nico threw himself into the shadows without a backwards glance.


	2. Chapter 2 - Breaking

A/N: Thanks so much everyone for reviewing last chapter! So awesome, I recognise so many names and I love you all!  
And...ahem... I, erm, apologise for the last chapter. I should have probably given a bit of warning for that so, um... sorry for the feels *sheepishly hands over one or seven band-aids*. Might want to use them a little for this chapter too. I haven't killed anyone off, I swear, but...

* * *

 **Chapter 2: Breaking**

The hospital was bright. It was white, and bright, and it smelled of chemicals.

That was all Nico registered when he shadowed directly into its walls. It was all he had time to discern, all that his weary mind could register as he staggered towards the desk of the emergency room with Will slung across his shoulders.

He didn't hear exactly what the startled young receptionist asked. He didn't really care about the specifics. She blinked in surprise before blanking into professional efficiency as she called out for what he assumed was assistance over her shoulder. Nico was panting heavily. His legs trembled under the strain of holding both himself and Will off the ground. He hurt, but it was a secondary concern, he was dizzy and his vision blacked out every few seconds from the shadow travel that had been just one too many that day, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered but…

"Please help him," he croaked to anyone, to everyone. He just hoped that his voice was loud enough to be heard.

Nico didn't know why he'd taken them to a hospital rather than the infirmary at Camp Half-Blood. Maybe it was panic that had driven him, or a passing memory of the hospital he'd visited numerous times alongside will as he stopped by to see his mother. Naomi Solace was a doctor – the _best_ doctor. Surely if anyone could help, could fix what had happened, what was wrong, what _could go wrong_ with a head injury that spewed forth that much blood, it would be her.

He nearly lost it when Will was pried from his grasp. Spinning and nearly falling, only maintaining his feet as a faceless nurse steadied him, Nico whipped his head around in terror as his blurry eyes fastened on Will being lifted onto a gurney. He was nearly hidden entirely from view by the ring of orderlies around him, then he physically was when they set off at a near-run from the waiting room, Will trundling along between them.

Nico released a hoarse cry, wrenching himself from the steadying nurse's grasp and making after him. He lurched across the room, a moan that was more of a sob, a whimper, tumbling from his lips as he stumbled in the gurney's wake. Only to have his way bared by the double doors that snapped shut behind the orderlies, stealing Will from his sight. The doors that clicked and fastened, locking to anyone who wasn't authorised beyond. The rectangle of glass window at head height taunted Nico with the barest glimpse of the other side. Nico grabbed at the handle-less gate barring his passage, his fists pounding in terror and panic and insanity as much as desperate rage.

They didn't budge. They didn't even tremble beneath his strikes.

"Will," Nico cried, a pitiful sound even to his own ears that echoed like a mournful wail. _Will, Will is gone, they've taken him away, oh Gods, they've taken him away where I can't get to him, I can't – I can't see… I won't_ know…

Sobs wracked through Nico, bodily shakes that rocked him and buckled his knees beneath him. In a sprawling collapse that had the nurse who had waited alongside him exclaiming in worry, he sunk to the hard, cold linoleum floor. A wash of tears unlike any Nico had experienced since his sister had died gushed forth. He curled forwards, arms wrapping around his stomach and head nearly touching the ground in his slump. Everything seemed to spill forth in an unending, unrestrainable torrent.

Will.

They'd taken him away. To fix him or just to hold him until he died Nico wasn't sure. And he wouldn't know. Nico wouldn't even know which it was until someone _told_ him.

He hurt. His fingers hurt, and his legs moaned in protest at his twisted sitting. His ribs pained him every time he breathed and the welling bruise that had blossomed on his shoulder, the numerous cuts and gashes and scrapes and grazes, were all making themselves known. But all of it was nothing compared to the sheer debilitating ache in Nico's chest. The ache that chanted and cried for Will, that drew forth time and time again in stark clarity the image of his blood smeared face, of his unconscious expression that could have been dead but _wasn't, it wasn't, Will couldn't be dead, not_ my _Will…_

A low keen rung through the room. It took Nico a detached moment to realise it came from him. He didn't care. For once he didn't care who heard him, who judged him for his weakness, for his display of grief, who frowned and sighed and complained that "couldn't he just stop already?" Nico was hurting and though his cries didn't help they may have just stopped him from sinking further, from being torn even more decisively apart. Just maybe.

He sat, crumpled and hunched before the doors of the ER of St. Soleil Public Hospital and poured out his grief, entirely ignoring the tentative hands of the nurse that stood beside him. Nico was terrified. He'd never been so terrified in his entire life. Before him rose his weakness, his greatest fear, and it was overwhelming him in a earth-shattering, nerve-shorting, disastrous explosion.

Percy had developed something of a fear for water after the quest that had taken them to Greece.

Thalia had always been strung into near hysterics by heights.

But Nico… Nico feared death. He feared death itself more than anything else in the world, more than monsters, more than pain or the darkness of nightmares that drove him into insomnia. Only it wasn't his own death that he feared the most. After Bianca…

 _This is why. This is the very reason. It really is too much, too painful, to get close to people. Not when they leave you in the end…_

* * *

Nico was unfeeling. Unfeeling both physically and emotionally. Even as his gaze rested upon his fingers, their broken lengths bandaged by the doctor that had visited when he'd refused to move from the waiting room, Nico felt nothing but numbness. Numb and detached and faintly curious, though not quite enough for that curiosity to absorb his attention.

He didn't know how long he'd been sitting there for. Nico hadn't seen the nurse at the reception get up and leave during handover but they must have because the young woman he vaguely recalled from before was absent, replaced by a middle aged man with a shadow of a beard and kindly gaze that drew towards him far too often. That was about all that Nico noticed of him, though. Anything else remarkable about the man was overlooked as his focus fell inwards, drifting in the listless exhaustion that had arisen to replace the hysteria that had collapsed him to the floor when Will had been... taken away.

A doctor had come to see him. Or maybe it was a nurse, Nico wasn't sure. A short, plump woman with a clipboard and ballpoint pen was all he could recall of her after she'd left. She'd questioned him, asked him questions about Will and what had happened before snapping her attention from her questioning when she'd realised that Nico was injured too. Nico didn't care about that, about any of that. He didn't respond to either her questions or her urging to follow her lead to get himself looked at. He didn't think he could have spoken even had he wanted to. Nico just felt...

Empty.

Somehow he'd managed to seat himself on one of the uncomfortable, plastic chairs in the waiting room. Seat himself and remain seated, despite the insistent tugging of the woman - the nurse or the doctor or whoever she was - that attempted to urge him to follow her. She'd eventually ceased her efforts, speaking to one of her colleagues who had approached to help with words like "resistant" and "shock" and "can just patch him up. Nothing critical". They'd left him when their fiddling was done, giving him a plastic cup and a pair of pills that were supposed to relieve pain. Or at least they'd left him after sitting alongside him for several minutes or days and urging him to take the pills, murmuring that they'd make him feel better.

They wouldn't. Nothing could make him feel better. Why should he bother?

The endless time after that was lost in the depths of Nico's thoughts. In a torrent of self-loathing and terrified regret, of horrified what if's and rabid frustration, demanding what _possible_ stupidity could have urged him to let _Will_ be the one to face the Chimaera. It should have been Nico. It should have been him to have battled it, to have taken the blow if it had to fall or - or he should have been faster in killing the lesser monsters, he should have been better, done _more_ –

He'd been too slow. And now Will... now Will was made to suffer for it.

There was the reliving of every second of the battle. The image of the frightened young demigods Nico had left behind that was smothered by the memory of Will lying broken and bleeding on the ground. And alongside that, drifting like a distant tune of background music...

 _"We will come for you, son of Hades. She has willed it be done. You have killed my brother, you with that sword of yours. We will come for you and just as you have destroyed that which she most loves, we shall destroy that which you hold most dear._

You can't escape from us..."

The words the Chimaera had whispered in the seconds before its was burst into dust, whispered in a voice that Nico hadn't even known it possessed, returned to his memory in his mindless, scathing retrospect. He could guess who the Chimaera's brother had been – it was a commonly known fact that the Nemean Lion was the sibling of the Chimaera – but 'she'… no, Nico fathomed that he could guess who 'she' was as well.

 _We shall destroy that which you hold most dear…_

He had to close his eyes at the memory. Close them and squeeze them tightly shut. Not because he felt the urge to cry, for Nico doubted he'd ever have the strength or the tears enough to cry again after his eruption of unstoppable grief on the floor hours or days before. He had to close them to erase the torrent to images, of people, the endless list of those he _did_ care about. Smiling faces and frowning faces, laughter and teasing and swordplay and questing. The precious moments of sitting beside one another in silence, or in idle, superficial conversation. Of being caught beneath an arm and drawn into an embrace, of Will's broad, radiant smile in the second before he leaned forwards for a kiss…

There were too many people. More than Nico had realised, and too many that he simply cared too much about. This person, this _monster_ that apparently had affixed a target on his back… she would destroy those precious to him?

Nico detachedly contemplated that reality. Detachedly and unfeelingly, as he did with every thought that arose but for the distant guilt and reprimand and self-loathing. He knew it was bad, that he should worry, that it was _really bad_ and he would have to do something, would have to protect those he cared about but… to do so, to really manage the utmost of such protection. Was he strong enough for that?

Nico wasn't sure. He wasn't sure he had a choice even if he wasn't. That reality hit him like a blow to his already aching gut, but he hardly felt that either.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been sitting in the waiting room when Naomi came for him. Not that it mattered, but some distant, passing thought pondered the useless consideration. At first Nico couldn't look at her. Not because of the guilt or shame but because he couldn't shake himself from his stupor immediately. Nico simply stared, eyes fastened upon the door Naomi had entered through unblinkingly, unshakeably. He couldn't draw his attention from the passage that Will had disappeared through for a bare second.

The touch of Naomi's hand finally drew him from his listlessness. Slowly, with a heaviness that almost made it painful to do so, he turned his head towards her. Like everything else in the room, Naomi's features, wreathed in her golden curls, were distorted, glowing slightly from the too-bright light overhead. Her expression, though discernible, was unreadable to him. She tilted her head slightly and her hand pressed gently upon Nico's at it rested in his lap.

"Nico," she murmured, quietly. It took a moment for the sound to actually register in Nico's mind, even as he heard it clearly enough. "Nico, it's alright."

Nico blinked up at her, not even attempting to make sense of her words. A _lright? No, it wasn't alright. Nothing was alright because Will –_

"Will's alright, Nico," Naomi continued just as gently. "He's asleep, but he's going to be alright. I've… we've seen to him. He's just resting now."

Nico would have shaken his head if he could have. If he cared to. _Not alright, it could never be alright, not after what happened, there was no fixing –_

"Would you like to come and see him?"

 _Not alright, never better, never fixable –_ Nico's mumbling thoughts whirred into background noise as Naomi's words slowly registered. Finally, with more effort than it should have taken, he blinked and focused upon her face. It was a struggle, piecing together the slight crease of worry in her brow, the weary heaviness of her eyes and the downturn of her lips that she attempted to reverse into a soothing smile only for it to slip back downturned once more moments later.

Nico couldn't speak. He wasn't sure if he even had a voice anymore; it might have been lost somewhere alongside his ability to really feel his feelings. But he nodded. Slowly and jerkily, a gesture that he knew the meaning of but didn't exactly make sense in that moment. Nico tried, though, because he knew it was what he should do.

Naomi attempted and failed to reverse the downturn of her lips once more before rising to her feet, hand slipping from Nico's. Nico rose like a puppet on strings after her and, without a backwards glance at the room he'd spent hours in, followed her through the doors that she beeped into opening with a flash of her badge. They clicked shut behind him with a hissing sigh.

White, bright, and smelling of chemicals. That was the sense that Nico revisited as he followed Naomi down the hallway, eyes trained upon the heels of her shoes and the hem of her white doctors coat. He noticed in his periphery the passing of other doctors and nurses, the occasional machine of wrapped cords and cables sitting idle in a corner, the standard issue picture and frame or the procedural description for fire drills, or chemical spills or directing to 2B or 3C. They passed doors, some open but most closed, and Nico didn't possess the care to look inside them.

Naomi walked with sure steps, certain in her route and uttering nothing more than a nod or a murmured word of greeting to her fellow workers that she passed them. She paused only once, at an elevator that seemed to take far too long to arrive, at which point she spared a glance over her shoulder and up at him as though to ascertain whether or not Nico still followed her. He had to wonder if she would have cared had he not.

The ward that they arrived in was quiet but for distant murmurs and the incessant, muted beeps of machines buried in the rooms they passed. Nico was alerted for the first time to the fact that it was night, or at least evening. The absence of visitors, of anyone but the skeleton staff of orderlies and nurses, should have registered to him sooner, but he it hadn't. Even that thought left his mind when Naomi paused outside a half-opened door into a dark room.

She glanced up at Nico once more, her expression becoming even more weary and closed. She attempted another smile, however. Nico wondered if it was more of an attempt to reassure her or himself. "We're just keeping the lights off for the time being," she said quietly, the sort of quietness used to speak around a sleeper. "He won't wake up likely for at least another day or two but we're trying to keep everything toned down as much as possible." And with that she slipped silently into the room.

Nico wanted to burst in after her. He wanted to tear open the door, fling aside the drawn curtains that he could see encapsulating half of the room, to throw himself onto the bed that _Will_ was lying in, _Will_ who was _alright_ , who would live because… because…

It was only just registering, slowly and incrementally, that Naomi might have been speaking the truth. That, as foreign and ridiculous as it might seem, she wasn't attempting to comfort or deceive Nico by offering him a false hope. Why would she? It would pain her as much as it would Nico when reality was restored.

Nico wanted to cry again. He wanted to sag with relief, to lean heavily against the nearest wall and allow his aching body, tension the only thing that still held him upright, to ease and release. He wanted – he needed – to see Will, to touch him, to be assured of his existence, that he was still alive.

He didn't do any of those things. Though the emotions welled within him, a lid had clamped atop of them, preventing them from spilling forth and easing Nico with their simple feeling _._ His face felt hard, brittle, as though wrought from stone. He felt cold, chilled, as lifeless as the dead that he had seen far too often. It was all Nico could do to shuffle his feet forwards and step into the dark room beyond, to draw aside the curtains and approach the narrow, elevated bedside.

There was nothing else in the room besides Will. Or there might have been, but if there were it was inconsequential. Nico's eyes fell upon him and he couldn't even blink for staring at him, for drinking in the faint touch of colour to his cheeks, for listening to the shallow, sleepy breaths that sounded oh-so-alive.

He still looked unwell. His normally sun-kissed skin was still pale beneath the faint flush, the freckles all the more apparent for it. There was a slight darkness beneath his eyes, as though his body was fighting against a rising tide of exhaustion. Even the golden blonde of his curls seemed to have dimmed slightly, though that may have simply been for the darkness of the room or the prominent patch that covered half of his forehead and folded beyond his hairline.

But he was alive. In that moment, that fact was the most important to Nico in the world.

The locking of his knees was the only thing that kept Nico on his feet. He couldn't move, couldn't have sought a chair had one presented itself beside him. He couldn't even bring himself to reach forward to touch Will, to make sure he was in fact solid rather than an imperfect illusion created by Nico's own mind. He could only stare, his eyes the only thing moving as they drew across the speed-bump mound of Will's body lying prone beneath the thin hospital blankets. Across the oximeter clipped onto one fingertip of his single revealed arm, the cannula protruding from the elbow, the neck of the standard-issue hospital gown and up to his face once more. The upwelling of emotion, of feeling, was roiling just beneath the surface, clamped firmly beneath the unwieldy lid.

Nico wasn't sure how long he stared for. He had always had that difficulty, a skewed sense of time when he became deeply unhinged. Minutes could have been hours or even days and he likely wouldn't have noticed. He wouldn't really have cared either. It was only because Naomi sidled around the bed to his side that Nico even managed to draw himself from his stasis, from his unblinking staring, at all.

"Nico?"

Her voice was quiet, faintly questioning and just slightly touched with request. With just the faintest demand for an explanation and yet understanding that, should Nico be unable to speak, she wouldn't push it. Naomi had always been kind to Nico, had always been accepting of him in her bubbly, outspoken sort of way. That bubbliness was absented at the present, vanished without leaving even the faintest impression of a footprint in its wake. But Nico owed that kindly woman his consideration at the least. At the very least.

With a struggle that was deeper than any Nico could have predicted, he drew his gaze from Will's sleeping face. Sleeping, not dead, he had to remind himself. Naomi's features were so similar to her son's, noticeable in spite of their familiarity in individuality, that he nearly flinched. Nico swallowed down a thick tightness, his throat grown as dry as unbuttered toast without his realising it.

He didn't know what he'd intended to say, but the words spilled forth nonetheless. They sounded as though someone else spoke them. "I'm sorry, Naomi. I'm s-so sorry. This is all my fault."

Nico stared at her for a moment, blank and unfeeling despite the sudden upwelling in tamped emotions churning within him. He stared at her open weariness, at the sadness and grief and worry etched into her features, and he saw the moment she sagged in acceptance. With a single hand, she reached out to Nico's arm and drew them both backwards into a pair of seats that Nico hadn't even noticed he stood before. It hurt to sit down. Nico wondered at that, even as he considered which part of him actually hurt.

Naomi gave a sigh. A heavy sigh, the likes of which Nico had never heard from her before. Naomi was a genius neurosurgeon, was almost frighteningly intelligent both with her medical knowledge and her deductive skills, but she had always been an optimistic sort of person. She wasn't the sort to fall prey to melancholy, or the listlessness that had consumed Nico before she had found him.

In that sigh, Nico heard weariness tapering towards exhaustion. He heard the fear, the terror of a mother who had nearly lost her son, the disbelief that she had dodged that bullet and the need to reassure herself that she had, indeed, survived the ordeal. The grasp she maintained on Nico's wrist was tight with that need for reassurance. It was a reassurance that Nico himself couldn't provide.

"Nico," she said quietly, and waited until he had struggled to draw his gaze towards her once more. "It is not your fault. I don't believe that."

Nico was silent. Silent as he stared at her, then silent further as he returned his gaze back to Will. Naomi gave another sigh, just as heavy as the first, before she continued. When she spoke it sounded as though she spoke as much to herself as she did to Nico. "I was angry. So angry until… not too long ago. I was angry at you, yes – because you were involved, Nico; it wasn't fair but I was angry at you – but more than that I was furious with Will. In the end, regardless of whether it was because he followed you into danger or whether you had simply fought alongside one another and circumstance had nearly… had nearly _killed_ him…" Naomi paused as though to steady herself after her own admission. "In the end, it was his decision. I have long since had to reconcile myself with bowing to _his_ decision."

Her hand tightened around Nico's wrist almost painfully, but it was a dull pain. It was nothing compared to the aches that tightened every one of Nico's muscles, that breathed upon every inch of skin. It was barely noticeable when compared to the gaping wound that was his own terror and despair, a wound that barely even contemplated the thought of healing with the reality of Will's continued survival presented to him.

Naomi continued after a pause. "When I stopped being angry, I realised that my anger was actually fear. And when I stopped – no, actually, I don't think I have stopped being afraid. I doubt I ever will. But when I became… less fearful, when I realised that my worst nightmares were not coming to be realised right before my eyes… I'm grateful."

From Nico's periphery, he could see Naomi draw he gaze from her son to rest on Nico. He didn't see so much as feel the intensity of her gaze, an intensity that Will himself had so often affixed upon him in many varied and entirely different situations. He didn't turn to face her – he couldn't, not with the weight of his guilt sitting upon him. Not with Will as the focus of his attention, demanding monopolisation of his gaze.

Not even when Naomi's following words, quiet and thick with emotion bordering on tears, caused him to flinch. "Thank you, Nico. I don't know what happened – I'm not sure I want to know what happened – but I know that Will wouldn't be alive right now if it wasn't for you. Not only did you bring him back to me, but you healed him before, didn't you? With that ambrosia that Will is always talking about?" She shook her head and gave a faint sniffle, her free hand rising to wipe at her eyes even before her tears had fallen. "There's no other explanation for it. None of the other doctors could explain how it wasn't as bad as it realistically should have been. He had a concussion, his skull was fractured, and there was – there was so much blood, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been. It wasn't nearly as bad."

Nico didn't want to hear that. He didn't want to hear the damage that he'd caused to Will with his negligence, how close he had come to losing him. But he couldn't speak to stem Naomi's words, not even if he'd wanted to. She needed to speak just as much as he needed her silence.

"I don't think there's any way to repay you for returning my son to me. And the strain it put on you, too…" Nico saw her gaze drop to Nico's arm, to his hand as her own drifted down to gently touch the bandages around his fingers. "You have nothing to apologise for, Nico. If anything, I should be apologising to you."

Nico swallowed once more, but even that didn't rid his voice of its croakiness when he finally managed to force his words out. "If it hadn't been for me then none of this would have happened." The hasty shadow travel, the careless disregard for support, allowing Will to face the Chimaera when it should have been Nico. All of it – there was no one to blame _but_ him.

"Maybe," Naomi murmured. "I don't know. I don't know the full story of what happened, of how it happened. But I know what I've seen, and what I've seen is that you brought him to me so that he could be saved."

Nico knew Naomi was crying now. Once more he could feel it more than he could see it or hear it, silent as the cascade of tears was. Her slight sniffles were barely audible themselves. He could physically feel the weight of her grief, battering against the relief that built with each word and which was the inevitable linchpin that tipped her over into expressing herself in an upwelling of releasing emotion.

Nico didn't cry. He still didn't cry, even though his throat tightened in response to Naomi's tears. He couldn't even squeeze his eyes closed, because that would be robbing him of the sight and reassurance of Will lying before him. He wondered detachedly whether Naomi would think him heartless for his lack of emotional display. She didn't appear resentful, from what he could vaguely make out, nor even saddened by his response. If anything she seemed sympathetic, sympathetic _for_ Nico for some reason. He couldn't fathom why.

When she continued, turning back towards Will, her words were faintly pondering. "I've always known that I had to expect it. Or at least prepare myself for it. As a demigod, I know Will faces dangers I can't even imagine. The fact that he survived into adulthood at all is something of a miracle. He told me, even though I'd guessed much for myself, of some of the dangers he's been forced to endure." She shook her head and a touch of fondness coloured her tone. "I always thought he gave me something of a watered down version of things. That's what I thoughts. I suppose I was right.

"But what I mean, Nico," Naomi turned back towards him, her hand tightening around his wrist once more. Nico hardly noticed. "Is that I _knew_. I _expected_ , and I think even a part of me has always thought that someday I would lose Will to a monster. The fact that I haven't as of yet is a blessing. And that is as much because of the support of those around him as because of his own skills. I'm sure of it.

"He left me because of those dangers, did you know? I've deduced that much, even though he doesn't tell me. There was one time when he was only a child – I will always remember it so clearly, even though I knew I wasn't seeing what was _really_ happening because of the Mist. It impressed upon me the reality of our situation, however, that there's a danger that pursues my son that I can't protect him from, a danger that would only inhibit his own survival and likely jeopardise it further if we remained together. If he had to try to protect me as well as protect himself. It was one of the main reasons that he decided to come to Camp Half-Blood, did you know? Even at barely nine years old he made that decision."

Naomi shook her head and Nico was afforded a very distinct sense of pride. Sorrowful pride but pride nonetheless. "It was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made to let him go, even if it was only temporarily. The hardest decision, but necessary nonetheless."

She fell into silence after that. It was a silence that was broken only by the beeping of the ignored machine at Will's bedside. Her hand remained tight around Nico's wrist, holding onto him as though he were a lifeline, and Nico didn't care. He had eyes only for Will, even as his mind turned over the words that he had heard and only barely registered.

They was far too relevant for him. Far too applicable. They gave him the answer to his decision that wasn't really a decision at all. Naomi had said it entirely, laid out reality perfectly, and Will had demonstrated his own strength in doing what must be done even as a child. What Nico, too, had to do. He might not be strong enough – he knew he wasn't – but as he sat there beside Naomi, staring at Will and reliving the moment that his world had seemed to fracture into splinters, he knew he didn't have a choice. That he would do it anyway. The echoing words of the Chimaera taunted him just on the edges of his thoughts.

 _We shall destroy that which you hold most dear…_

Nico didn't have a choice. There was only one thing he _could_ do.

He'd always been partial to running. It was what Nico did when a situation was too impossible to handle. Cowardly, some might call it, but necessary. It was the only way he'd managed to survive for as long as he had. This time, however, though cowardice was still a primary trigger for his actions, Nico knew he would be driven by a sore and desperate need as well. It was that desperation, that need to protect, which inevitably urged him to leave. He wasn't sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing that Will wouldn't be awake in time to tell him.

 _Sorry, Will. I could only keep one of my promises to you. I'm sorry for that, even if it was the most important one._

* * *

Grogginess wrapped his mind like a limb thickly blanketed. Will felt warm, comfortable as he swum into vague consciousness, even as his head immediately set up a dull, persistent throbbing. Slowly, squinting against a light that was barely discernible through the smothering gloom, Will cracked his eyes open.

He recognised where he was immediately, even if it didn't really make sense that he was there. A hospital. The room reminiscent of so many peered into both when visiting his mother at work and through his studies and clinical rotations at the teaching hospital.

Hospital. How had he even gotten there? After…

In a slow, patchwork-quilt-assemblage of memories, the reality of Will's situation settled upon him. The Chimaera, the questing demigods, Fionn and Harley, Huang and Riley and Josef. Fighting the Chimaera and the lesser monsters that could only be its offspring for their likeness, with Nico fighting at his back. Nico who was –

Blinking around himself, Will squinted at the empty room. It was entirely empty, but for the heart monitor at one side of his bed and the empty IV stand on the other. That, and two chairs to the left of his bed, both similarly empty. He could make out the sound of voices beyond the slightly open door across the small room, beyond the curtains that surrounded his bed and dampened the light from that door, but there was no one _in_ the room.

Will didn't know what time it was. His internal clock, the clock that had always told him where the sun sat in the sky even when it was on the opposite side of the world, was fuzzy and muffled as though he were looking at it through misted glass. Even so, he would have hazarded from the murmur of sounds beyond the room that it couldn't have progressed to the nightshift yet, even if visiting hours were over.

Which might explain why Nico wasn't there. Will might have been a touch indulgent to assume that Nico would be at his bedside if he could be but he was also realistic. Of course Nico would be. Just as Will would be for him.

Rolling his head slightly to take another, wider scan of the room – just for the hell of it – Will winced as his head twinged painfully once more. Raising a hand, he felt to his forehead, to the source of the pain, and his fingers brushed against thick padding and a thinner shroud of gauze. A head injury, then, which he could have deduced simply from the throbbing headache he was enduring. A head injury from…

The Chimaera. Right. The Chimaera had gotten a hit in. He could remember that now, vaguely, distantly, as though he was watching a movie rather than recalling the events that had transpired. Between himself, Harley, Fionn and Josef – though in reality it wasn't really arrogant to state the truth as such but it had mostly been him – they had disabled the snake and the goat heads and were faced with just the lion. They might have defeated it too without further injury on their part, but then Josef had drifted a little too close to the swiping paws and fallen to the ground in an attempt to avoid losing his head. Will had dived after him in an attempt to shield the younger demigod and then –

He couldn't really remember the moment of impact, but it must have happened. He must have been struck by the Chimaera, and it must have knocked him out. And then, given Will's current circumstances, he must have been taken to the hospital.

That it was a hospital at all suggested it was Nico that had taken him. Nico knew of his tendency towards hospitals, even as most demigods were just as content to have their wounds tended to by the Camp's infirmary. And if Nico had taken him to hospital…

 _It means he's alright. It means that, most likely, the Chimaera was defeated and, hopefully, the kids were saved. Gods, I hope they're safe._

Will wished he could get up. He wished he could move, that he could lever himself from his bed and seek the nearest person with a brain who could fill him in on exactly where he was, what his condition was, when he could leave and where the person who had brought him in currently waited.

He couldn't do any of that, however. Will could hardly even sit himself up, he rapidly came to realise, as when he attempted, propping his elbows beneath him, it was to waver dangerously for a moment, dizziness brightening the feeble light of the room and making it spin. He managed to remain upright, however, if with a struggle, and gradually his vision cleared.

It was unlikely that Will would be standing anytime shortly, however. Or that he would be healed enough to wander through the hospital in search of Nico who _must_ be here somewhere. Not for the first time in his life, Will wished that his healing abilities, the skill that enabled him to fix minor injuries with the force of his willpower and intent, worked on himself, too. Instead, he settled himself for attempting to remain upright; Will would be damned if he would just lie back uselessly, even if such recline would most likely do nothing more than hasten his recovery.

It was because he was sitting up that Will saw it. He likely wouldn't have noticed it for hours if he hadn't been attempting to maintain a ninety-degree angle ofseat. At his feet, nearly camouflaged into the blankets that engulfed the distinctive mound of his knees and legs, was a folded piece of paper. In the poor lighting, Will could just make out the word written in spidery letters on the top of it.

 _Will_.

Reaching forward, wincing as the lethargy of his body and the protesting ache of his head, Will grabbed at the folded paper. He would recognise Nico's thin, spindly handwriting anywhere, and not the return of the Chimaera itself would stand between Will and reading whatever note he'd left for him. Although, why Nico felt it necessary to leave a _note_ rather than simply wait for Will to wake up himself he didn't know. Will tried not to begrudge him that – he didn't even know how long he'd been out for.

Still, it was with detachedly rising foreboding that he opened the note. Will didn't know what it was, why it had arisen in the first place, but the simple presence of the note itself wasn't reassuring. Raising a hand and struggling to force a faint glow of sunlight radiance from his palm to see by more easily, he squinted down at the spider web of words printed across the page. At Nico's words, that he would have picked to be Nico's even without recognising his handwriting.

 _Will,_

 _Don't die. Before I say anything else, I have to ask you that. No, I'll demand that from you. It's the first and the most important thing I could ever ask of you, so you make sure you listen to me. I'll never forgive you if you don't, and that might not mean all that much to you in just a little while but I hope it sticks enough that you actually do what you're told for once._

 _Secondly, I'm sorry. You know I'm not all that great with apologies, so that was actually harder to write than it might have sounded. I'm sorry because I couldn't manage to keep my promise. Because some promises are harder to keep than others, and making sure you don't die is the most important one. You're an idiot, Will, and you're too self-sacrificing. You care too much about what happens to other people, about what happens to me, to step out of the line of fire to save yourself._

 _And that's why you're on your own now. I could have told you that I don't love you anymore, but that would be a lie. I could tell you that you've made me so angry that I can't stand you anymore, but that would be a lie too. Mostly. You wouldn't believe me anyway – you've always been good at telling when I'm speaking the truth. I think you have a bit of that from Apollo in you too, even though you don't think so. You used to think that you lacked that honesty gene because you didn't have it yourself, but I think it takes a couple of different shapes. You've always been able to read me well enough._

 _I don't want to abandon you. I don't want to make you sad by doing that. I know you'll be angry, and hurt, and probably hate me for it, but I can't help that. Even knowing that won't change my mind. I care that you live more than I care about you hating me. That was actually harder to write than I expected it to be too. Does that make me a selfish person? You'd probably say yes but admit that it was warranted anyway._

 _I'm a son of Hades. Basically, being a kid of one of the Big Three makes me a ticking time bomb. I don't want to take you down with me, Will. You'd be a casualty of war, and you might kick up a stink about that but that's the truth of it. And I'm probably being selfish here again, but I couldn't handle that. I do love you, Will. I'd die for you. But I don't want you to die along with me._

 _Don't be an idiot, even thought you always have been. Don't think that I'll come back, because I won't. And don't try and find me either, because I'm better at running away and hiding then you are at seeking. If you even think about jeopardising your road to becoming the world-famous surgeon that I know you'll be, I'll kill you. And I don't care how counterproductive that makes me sound. I seriously will._

 _Live and be happy, Will._

The paper was coarse. Coarse and slightly crinkled. Morphed, as though it had been faintly misused. Or dampened. Or cried upon. Just a little bit, but enough for Will to notice it through the static numbness that shrouded his thoughts. Enough for him to affix his gaze upon the slight crinkling next to his own name – his own, not Nico's, the note left unsigned. The words he'd read over and over slowly, slowly started to shift and morph, to make sense.

Even when they did, it was still incomprehensible. Will didn't understand it.

Nico was leaving? Was leaving him? He still loved Will, but he was _leaving_ him? Because he was worried that staying around him would get him killed? How did he make that deduction? It was true, Nico was a child of the Big Three, but that wasn't _that_ exceptional. It didn't make him _that_ much more attractive to monsters than any other demigod. Did it?

Did it?

Did he?

Where -?

 _Why_ -?

 _How_ could he have -?

The numbness of Will's thoughts abruptly crumbled. Crumbled and unleashed the chaos of Tartarus, bursting forth in a flurry that overrode even his weariness, even the pain in his skull that protested at his sudden fury. Horror – anger – loss – frustration – _anger_ – despair – aching grief – confusion – more horror, and _so much anger_.

What had he done? _Nico, you fucking idiot, what in Hades have you done?!_ _Left_? He thought he could leave Will, just _leave_ , after _everything?_ After their years together, as lovers and best friends and comrades-in-arms, he thought he could just _leave?_

Will's head throbbed. It was painful, making the feeble light welling from his palm spark and dance blindingly. He felt his breath catch and his eyes blurred, though from dizziness, anger or tears of sheer pain he didn't know. All Will knew was that he hurt, he was confused, that he wanted Nico beside him _right now_ so that he could smack him, kiss him, could wring his neck and hold him so tightly that his very bones creaked from the force.

 _Why did you leave me? Because you don't want me to die? What kind of an excuse is that?!_

Will raged. He was frozen in immobility, in the madness of his mind that failed to burst forth as his lips remained frozen and his eyes stared unblinkingly, unseeingly, at the letter in his lap. At the letter that attempted and failed at light-heartedness, at nonchalance, but that Nico had _cried_ over. And Nico didn't cry. Nico _never_ cried.

He was –

Why did he –

After everything –

 _How could he do this to me?!_

That was how his mother found him not half an hour later, sitting silently and staring at the letter in his hands. A nurse had come and gone, had frowned with concern when he remained unresponsive, then with sympathy and reproval and just a hint of confusion as she took a glance at the note in Will's hand. He heard distantly, through the whirling of thoughts in his mind, how she admonished, how she clicked her tongue and scowled at the absent person who could possibly abandon their lover in such a situation. Will felt angry with her for that, too. She had no right to disapprove of Nico, to be angry with him, to _hate_ him. Only Will was allowed to do that. Only Will.

Naomi read the note. She read it, then sunk down onto the mattress at Will's side and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. Through the swirling haze, the dizziness, the pain of his mounting headache and the anger and grief and incomprehension that shrouded him, Will felt like nothing if not a child at his mother's side once more. He had long since outgrown her, towered over her when they stood side-by-side, but he leaned into his mother for the simple, silent support she offered.

Naomi understood. At least, she understood as much as Will did. Maybe even more than he did, for Will could fathom that Naomi would be of a like mind to Nico. That should she put Nico's wellbeing against Will's, against his own safety, that the Will's would trounce.

Will didn't even realise he was crying until he saw his tears spilling down to stain the letter just as Nico's had. Nico had run away from him. Just as Will had feared he would long ago. Just as he'd convinced himself he wouldn't.

And this time, Will didn't know if he would ever get him back.


	3. Chapter 3 - Longing

**Chapter 3: Longing**

 ** _~Three Years Later~_**

Will sighed as he breathed a cloud of mist into the winter air. It was crisply cold, he would admit. Crisp, but not too bad, even with the slightly biting breeze. It was cold but not too cold considering the ice that slicked the footpath, the mounds of snow that lined the gutters thickly but not too thickly and –

Well, maybe it was a little cold. And miserable. And no one in their right mind would be out and about at seven o'clock in the morning unless they absolutely had to be.

No one, and Will, because despite cherishing his sleep even more in recent years with the restrictions placed on such with his residency, there were some things that could turf him from bed as the feeble winter sun waveringly rose. Will almost glared at the pale white source of light but not warmth resting just above the horizon. Couldn't Apollo do him a solid and kick it up a notch just one morning?

At least it wasn't snowing. Yet.

Will shoved his gloved hands further into his pockets, tucking his chin into his scarf and bowing his hatted head into the biting breeze. He wasn't all that fond of the cold, never had been because he found it debilitating to be so shrouded in layers, but he would make an exception just this once. If Frank could make the effort to visit him in his brief trip to New York – to visit _them,_ really, for he would surely have taken a trip to Camp Half-Blood, regardless of how limited his time – then Will could do the same to get up early to meet him for that visit.

It was the weekend, a Sunday morning, and one of the few that Will had been given off of late. Halfway through the third year of his five-year-residency at New York Presbyterian Hospital, he had grown accustomed to the exhausting working week, to the lack of social life, the minimal hours that he actually spent away from the hospital. Some days it was a wonder why Will even bothered to make the trip back to his flat, even if it was less than an hour away. What was the point, really, when he would just be heading in again at the break of dawn anyway? It wasn't like there was anyone waiting for him.

Not to mention the fact that, exhausting thought it was, all consuming though it was, Will loved his work. Oh, there were times when he asked himself why he would even consider dedicating his entire life to such, what had possibly incited him to chase the livelihood of a surgeon – for it was a lifestyle choice, not simply a career. When sleepless nights began to pile up, or when Will had first begun to consider the hospital his home more than his actual flat was, the questions really started to surface. Many of his old friends had questioned his commitment, exclaiming over his dedication that seemingly surpassed even the usual for practicing residents – Piper was always urging Will to calm, to take a break every once in a while, Jason and Percy usually of an equal mind with their open concern and suggestions to "get out more" and even Annabeth, hardworking and motivated as she was, seemed to be of a like mind to her fellows.

Will brushed aside their concerns. It wasn't that he didn't appreciate them, but he didn't need them. What Will _needed_ was a focus for his attention, a focus _away_ from that which had nagged at him for years now, that was always on the fringes of his consciousness. Besides, he had an outlet; he would still visit Camp Half-Blood from time to time, still accompany the younger demigods on their quests upon occasion. He still always wore the leather strap of a bracelet with its crescent charm that could be drawn as the sword. Will just… hadn't had the chance to use it all that much of late. That or his bow.

 _I really should go to Camp to visit more often_ , he considered as he walked. It was just… Will so rarely had the time, and it was quite a trip out to Long Island. And then there were the memories that arose when he made the trip. Memories that were painful in their beauty and delight.

Will rounded the corner of the street, slowly coming alive with traffic and the crazed pedestrians that braved the morning despite the early hour, despite the cold and despite the fact that it was the weekend and historically the day of rest. He saw the little coffee shop, the _Golden Nectar_ , just as a young waiter who couldn't be out of high school yet was propping a sign out the front of the door. As he approached, Will thought he recognised the boy as a son of Demeter, though he couldn't be sure. He nodded to him anyway as he slipped past him through the door and the answering smile – broad and beaming and slightly excited – suggested he'd been right in his assumption.

Lou Ellen's café was niche in stylisation. Had any casual passer-by peered inside, it would have likely appeared a little old-fashioned, a little oddly fashioned, and quite opposing in décor to what the simplistic, half-window walls of the shopfront might suggest. Only demigods would recognise it as being reminiscent of Hecate's cabin, and for more than just the magical ambiance of the café.

Upholstered in stone – actual stone, Will knew, though he suspected that most would think it simply a lesser impression – it depicted elaborate runes and cursive scripts along the cornices, a fireplace that crackled in one corner even in summer – though suspiciously lacked heat in the warmer season – and a marble counter that boasted the industrial coffee machines, cash register and a glass-fronted fridge of cupcakes and cookies so dextrously built they appeared to have been spun from magic. Knowing Lou Ellen as he did, Will suspected that magic might have had more than a little to do with it.

The _Golden Nectar_ was commonly acknowledged as the go-to meeting point for demigods in New York, or at least for those of Will's generation. Rather than meeting at Camp Half-Blood, the café provided a safe haven with its runic inscriptions and the wall of magic and Mist that shrouded it. Mortals could enter – and did – but it was primarily acknowledged as being site of demigod activity. That was just as Lou Ellen had intended it. She'd developed the urge to build such a haven years ago and had stood fast to her resolution until she'd achieved that goal. Less than a year after she'd taken her graduating step from Camp and the café was already known across the eastern states of the US as being a site to seek the aid and companionship of others with godly parentage.

As Will stepped through the door, the warmth of the fireplace immediately eased the hunch of his shoulders and the tuck of his chin. The widely spaced round tables of polished black – rune inscribed, naturally – were largely empty but for two in particular. One sat a man with a thick white beard sipping at the heavy mugs that were offered for strong coffee, while the other Will's friend. Or friends.

Striding across the room, already unlooping his scarf from around his neck, Will nodded his head in greeting as Frank glanced up at his entrance. "Hey, Frank. Sorry I'm a bit late."

Before Frank could speak, Leo, seated at his side, replied for him. "The nerve of you, Will, making us wait. We must have been sitting here for, what, nearly seven minutes by now."

"I think that's a bit of an exaggeration," Frank replied. "I'd guess more like four and a half."

Will offered a small smile as he took a seat across from them. Leo and Frank were about as opposite as two people came, in both appearance and personality. Leo was tall and wiry, warm-skinned and a with an anchor-style stubble darkening his chin and upper lip. He always had a permanent flop of fuzzy curls sticking out from around his head as though he'd been shocked by a mild dose of electricity. Affable was the impression Leo radiated. It was an accurate impression at that.

In contrast, Frank was taller, broader – rugby-player kind of broad – and pale, with finicky commitment to remaining clean-shaven. He wore his own hair in a permanent buzz cut, though today at least Will was relieved to see he had actually decided to wear a hat to keep his head warm. Where Leo was a chatterbox and wore a near-constant smile, Frank was quieter, more mellow and deep thoughtful. Leo lit up the room with his enthusiasm – quite literally at times with the sheer energy of his godly gift – while Frank was more of a stable, constant presence, a rock of support or a pillar to hold the roof aloft.

And yet, different they may be and historically prone to butting heads likely because of that difference, they were more than companionable these days. Will found it odd to realise at times that Leo and Frank probably kept in contact with one another the most out of all of them. Most wouldn't pick it given that they were almost always bantering and teasing one another. Or at least, _Leo_ was always teasing _Frank,_ who did an admirable job of ignoring him most of the time.

Offering a nod of greeting to each of his friends, Will glanced towards the counter and caught the eye of the waitress as she stacked cups in preparation for the day. He paused for a moment, contemplating, before offering her a small smile in turn. He hadn't even noticed his younger sister upon entering the shop. "Hi, Mina. It's been a while. I didn't know you were working here at the moment."

Mina shrugged as she juggled mugs, her wide shoulders brushing at the bottom of her dark bob and offered Will a crooked smile. "Yeah, well, holiday spending money and all that. Lou's generous in taking me on."

"She pretty much takes anyone on who asks," Leo offered. "Gives a mean recommendation too, just for future reference."

"I'll bear that in mind," Mina nodded. It was common knowledge that the _Golden Nectar_ only hired demigods in an effort to provide a place to work for the young part-timers who struggled against the monster attacks that, if nothing else, severely jeopardised their work experience and job stability. Mina glanced back at Will with a questioning raise of her eyebrow. "What can I get you?"

"Long black, if you would. Thanks."

"Any brekkie?"

"Depends what you've got on offer today, I guess," Will replied, glancing towards the refrigerator with its array already on display. Lou Ellen reputedly changed her menu as frequently as the sun rose and fell. She claimed it got boring otherwise, but Will found the inconsistency a little bemusing at times.

Mina followed his gaze as she wiped her hands on the front of her apron. "I could warm you up a French toast muffins if you'd like?"

"That'd be great," Will nodded, sinking back in his chair with a sigh. He didn't know how she did it, but somehow Lou Ellen managed to make the seats more comfortable that simple wood should be.

"Kicking off the day with a healthy blast of caffeine?" Leo asked. "Good man. Always the way to be."

"You don't even drink coffee," Frank said.

"Yeah, but I can appreciate a solid habit when I see one."

"Personally, I'm not a fan," Frank said, deliberately taking a sip of something that looked distinctly chocolaty.

Will shrugged. "Neither am I, really. Just had a late night last night. If I'm going to actually be functional today, I need a pick-me-up."

Frank gave a sympathetic wince. "Sorry, I didn't realise. I would have tried to make it later if I'd know."

Will waved away Frank's apologies. "No, no, don't worry about it. It's my fault I couldn't visit Camp when you swung by and talking online just doesn't really cut it. I'm just glad I could catch up with you before you left. How've you been? When do you have to leave?"

"Yeah, I'm great. Going steady, as usual." Frank glanced down at his wrist, shucking back the sleeve of his heavy parker to glance at his watch. "I've got an hour before I've got to head over to the airport."

"Going…?"

"Back west a ways to Pennsylvania. Just north of Huntingdon."

"Which is… I have no idea," Leo offered.

"About the middle," Frank clarified.

"What are you chasing at the moment, Frank? I saw online those pictures you had of the bats, but wasn't sure exactly where that was headed." Will gave a faintly apologetic smile. He felt guilty that he didn't know more of what was going on with Frank. While Frank was closest to Leo and Percy out of their friends, they did share a certain camaraderie that the rest of them couldn't understand. Similar situations and all that, in at least one area in particular.

Frank nodded. "Yeah, I'm working with Indiana bats at the moment. The team's pretty hell-bent on this one. We're jumping all over the place, which is why I got to take the trip up to New York when I did. We're going out to Huntingdon to check out the wind facilities out around there because one of my colleagues – Jessie – she's doing a follow up paper on it."

"On what?" Will asked, curious.

Leo let out a groan before Frank could continue. "Don't get him started. Please. I had to listen to this for a good hour on Thursday."

"You didn't have to listen," Frank pointed out. Will credited him that he didn't even seem put out by Leo's attitude.

"Yes I did. It's basically protocol to listen the first time round."

"Well, then, you don't have to this time."

"It will still attack my ears," Leo complained.

Will gave another smile as his friends descended into back and forth banter. It was nice to see them so amiable. Really, it was nice to see them at all. Despite living so close to Camp Half-Blood, where Leo still resided in his veritable palace that had once been Bunker Nine, and Percy and Annabeth, Jason and Piper, even Reyna and Thalia, Jason's full-sister, at times visited, Will… didn't. Not often enough, anyway. He was busy with his studies, with putting in extra hours at the hospital when he could manage, with working under his mother when the opportunity presented itself. The last time he'd seen Leo was almost as long ago as it had been Frank, and Frank, field ecologist that he was, could go for months without visiting Long Island.

Will often thought Frank had the right idea, the better coping mechanisms out of the two of them. He seemed enthusiastic and yet not exhausted by his work, his weariness arising only when the frequent messages from his father, Mars, scolded him for participating in a job of sorts that was so far removed from warfare as to be its antithesis. Will often thought that Frank had chosen to become an ecologist largely because of that reason, or at least as significantly as because he seemed to have an affinity for animals, what with his shape-shifting abilities. He seemed to thrive on the simple act of pursing the greater good by representing species incapable of doing so for themselves.

Seem, however, was the operative word. Will knew that Frank as much as he was prone to heartache and melancholy.

"You're not working this afternoon though, are you, Will?"

Leo's words broke into Will's thoughts just as Mina arrived at the table with a smile and settled down his coffee and muffin. He murmured his thanks before turning back to Leo. "This afternoon? No, thankfully."

"Want to head back to my place, then? I think Jason and Piper were going to drop by. Pipes has her debut for her new show coming up."

Both Will and Frank exclaimed in synchrony. Will felt a genuine smile spreading across his face, the first he'd felt in a while. "No way. They're finally airing _The Cornucopia?"_

Leo nodded with a spreading smile of his own. "Yeah, got the all clear. She's really embarrassed about it but put the word out online a couple of days ago that it was showing."

"What's on the menu?" Frank asked. "Do you know?"

Leo tapped his nose with a smirk, which Will took for meaning that he didn't know either. "Doesn't matter really, does it? Anything she cooks will turn out a masterpiece."

"She does have a gift. You two weren't there for Jason's twenty-sixth." Leo adopted a wistful expression. "Good memories."

"Was it actually filmed at her restaurant?" Will asked, picking up his coffee and taking a sip.

Leo nodded. "What better scene, really? After Annabeth did up the place it's basically the perfect stage for it."

"When did Annabeth do that?"

"About four months ago I think it was," Frank said. He glanced at Leo. "Wasn't it?"

Will felt another pang of guilt as Leo nodded and went on to proclaim his appreciation further. He had very much been out of the loop recently. He _should_ have known what was happening with them all, wanted to know more. But there was work, and his studies, and… and Will wasn't all that inclined to go back to Camp these days.

Sliding his plate across the table with an offering gesture to Frank and Leo both – of which only the latter partook, Frank shaking his head with a grateful smile – Will turned towards Leo and attempted brightness. He wasn't so good with that as he used to be. "How's everyone been? I feel like I haven't caught up with any of you lately."

"Yeah, we have noticed that," Leo said easily, and Will fought not to wince.

"Tell me, then," he prompted.

Frank and Leo exchanged a glance, Leo's smile visibly widening. He even went so far as to crack his knuckles. "Thought you'd never ask."

Will only shook his head as he leapt into conversation.

The next half an hour was monopolised with Leo and his dutiful recounts of what everyone had been engaged in over the past few months. Will listened attentively, nodding at stories that he recalled reading about online or hearing of through the occasional and largely avoided phone calls. He smiled as Leo spoke of his inventions, of how he wouldn't admit that Calypso had ironed out the kinks in his hoverboard – finally perfected to an exact replica of that from the age-old _Back To The Future_. He raised his eyebrows in appreciative applause when he mentioned that Percy had broken another regional record in ocean swims – he'd ended up down near Florida and fit to push himself further but had been distracted by his father swinging by and had effectively had to cut his trip short. He chuckled when Leo described Jason's sheepishness over nearly blowing up his university recently when he'd accidentally overcharged his new renewable energy battery source with a blast of lightning, and shook his head when he continued to describe with coveted impressions how Jason was 'still technically in hiding from the angry masses of electrical engineers whose research projects he'd nearly destroyed'. Apparently Thalia had actually attempted to step in with her hunters and offer their support.

"How does Jason feel about this, exactly?" Will asked.

Leo shrugged with a grin. "After he got over his embarrassment I think he was quite proud of himself."

"Why is that?"

"Well, because his battery maxed out to about three-hundred percent and he baffled and awed his professors with his 'undeniable skills'."

"He's effectively a walking battery himself now then, isn't he?" Frank said, shaking his head with fond amusement.

"Something like that," Leo nodded. "He practically glows about as well as you can, Will." Picking at the last of Will's muffin distractedly – Will hardly tried a piece himself, with most of it being stolen by Leo's trickster fingers – he perked up an instant later as though pricked by a pin. "Oh! I forgot to tell you. Word is around the block –"

"Around the block?" Frank snorted.

"- that Reyna's thinking of throwing in her praetor-ship. Praetor-ness. Praetor…thing." Leo waved his hand, grasping at the air. He didn't even appear to have heard Frank's interruption.

Will raised his eyebrows. "No kidding? Seriously? How long's it been, now? More than eight years, isn't it?"

Leo shrugged. "Yeah, something like that. It'll be a right shame to see her step down. Camp Jupiter won't be the same without her. Her understudy – what's her name? Rhiannon something-or-other?"

"Rhiannon O'Scott," Frank corrected.

"Yeah, her." Leo nodded. "She's got a pretty good head on her shoulders, hasn't she?"

Will nodded, though he honestly knew very little of Rhiannon. He hadn't visited New Rome in years and had seen Reyna nearly as infrequently when she visited Camp Half-Blood. "If Reyna's been training her, then she'd have to be good."

"That's what I said last time Reyna dropped by. She doesn't say anything outright, but I heard her talking to Jason – and I get the impression she talked to Annabeth and Percy too – and she sounded a little bit worried about letting her shoes be filled." Rising to his feet he scooted his chair out. "Can't blame her, though. She's probably pretty attached to the job."

"Are you heading off?" Will asked in mild surprise.

"Already?" Leo shook his head. "Nah, just got to use the loo. Won't be a second." And with a grin flashed to both Will and Frank, he strode towards the staff door of the café like he owned the place. Mina didn't even glance up when he let himself through, disappearing beyond.

Frank turned back from glancing over his shoulder to meet Will's gaze with a fondly exasperated expression. "He's not all that subtle, is he?"

Will shook his head. He saw through Leo's actions as easily as Frank did, and he loved Leo for it. He was giving them their moment, their sorely needed moment, to talk about their shared troubles. The pain that both of them felt at an even more exaggerated level to the rest of their friends.

About Nico and Hazel.

Three years it had been since Will had last seen Nico. Three years of anger and panic that had faded into determined searching – of which had resulted in Will nearly failing his medical degree with hardly a care for the matter when he did – that unravelled into desperation, then grief and finally melancholic despair. Not acceptance, never acceptance, but simply… resignation. Will didn't know where Nico had gone, had looked everywhere he could think of and talked to everyone he could remember. He had pulled upon the ranks of his friends and fellow demigods, even calling upon the aid of the gods who would answer – or at least Apollo though there was apparently little he could actually do – and as a collective crew they had committed themselves to their search.

They find nothing. Nico had disappeared. It was all Will could do to deny the sympathetic glances that spoke the silent words as surely as if they had truly been voiced aloud: " _maybe he's not just run away. Maybe he's really gone. Permanently._ "

Will couldn't contemplate that. He avoided the very thought of Nico being _gone_ , and couldn't even consider the possibility that he was… that he was…

Nico was bad enough. But then, not six months later, Hazel had disappeared too. At least Will had been left a note, a reminder that he carried around with him in his wallet everywhere he went. It was an appalling goodbye, horrific and always enticed him into anger when he felt particularly desolate. But it was better than the simple words scribbled on the wall of Frank and Hazel's apartment.

 _I'm sorry, Frank._

That was all. One day, when Frank had returned from college the same as he always did, it was to find the absence of Hazel. He hadn't even noticed the hastily scrawled goodbye until he'd made his way to bed, had said he'd felt nothing but faint curiosity as to where his girlfriend was until he saw it. It was a mess of a scribble, written in barely legible letters as though Hazel had barely paused to write them before fleeing. And that lack of explanation had cut Frank deeply. Will wondered at times if he was possibly hurt as badly as Will was himself.

It was horrible. It was painful, and aching, and unhealing. But it was the same for the both of them, and in many ways Will considered it a benefit that they _both_ had someone to long for. It made the possibility that Nico and Hazel were simply gone more convincing rather than that they were… that they'd been… In his more lucid moments, when he could speculate on reality without anger, or grief, or pain so deep it was physical, Will wondered whether it was a feature of children of Hades to flee. To run and disappear rather than to explain. It certainly seemed that way with Nico. He had always been one to run, to avoid. Just as it had always been Will's role to remain something to come back to. To find him, if he could.

If he could.

For an entire year Will had been consumed by his search for Nico. He had always been an over-thinker, was overthinking too much in that instance too, but this time it was the acting as much as the thinking that consumed him. It really was a miracle that he hadn't flunked out in his studies entirely, though he had graduated with less than flying colours. Eventually, he managed to divide himself between his search and his studies – Nico and doctoring became his life. At times, Will was almost tempted to drop his goal to become a doctor entirely, if only for the simple fact that Nico had asked him, had ordered him, to continue with it. He hadn't, and in many ways he thanked his past self for not giving up on his lifelong dream to spite Nico. It was, at times, the only thing that kept him sane.

After two years, Will had stopped actively searching. It was in the same moment that he stopped mentioning Nico to anyone other than Frank at all. He simply couldn't talk about him anymore, not when it provoked such expressions of sympathy and pity, of sadness and the understanding that Nico was gone for good. The understanding that no one said to Will anymore because he'd been prone to fits of anger, of sadness and deliberate ignorance when suspicions were voiced. He spoke to no one except Frank about the Nico-Hazel situation, and even then only in brief and short exchanges. It was easier not to speak at all, not to hear the tentative comforts of his friends that should have been directed to someone mourning a death, or to his mother who had learned early on in the piece that she shouldn't suggest that he move on, that he try to find someone else.

There wasn't anyone else. Not for Will. He didn't know if there ever would be.

Demigods, apparently, loved deeply. They loved strongly and unshakeably, bound by experience in a way that most mortals simply weren't. Will only had to look at his friends, at Percy and Annabeth, at Piper and Jason, at Leo and Calypso, to know the truth for what it was. They loved long and deeply, and it didn't die. And Will was the same. Even after three years, he still loved Nico. Through the anger, the momentary blasts of hatred, the resentment and the desperation, he still loved him. Will only wished he'd actually told Nico that. It was only now that he realised they'd never said the words exactly, never expressly stated their love for one another though they both knew it. It had just seemed unnecessary.

It was one more thing that Will regretted. One of so many, the primary of which was that he hadn't been there to tell Nico to wait. To force him not to stay. That he'd been unconscious when Nico had made the decision that would tear Will apart. He was reminded of that fact every time he looked in the mirror, every time he saw the silver white scar that ran from his hairline half an inch into his forehead. It always angered Will when he saw it, filling him with a tide of self-hatred that he'd never experienced before the Chimaera incident. He'd had shattered more than one mirror over the years for that anger.

 _But at least it serves as a reminder,_ he always thought. _In the case that somehow, impossibly, I forget that it was all my fault that he left. It had to be. Why else would he have said what he did?_

Unconsciously, as he always did when he thought of Nico, Will's hand rose to touch the faint, abnormal smoothness of that scar.

"How've you been?"

Frank's quiet words drew Will's gaze from where he'd been staring after Nico. He attempted a smile that didn't quite make it and shrugged. "Same as usual."

Frank nodded, and there was real understanding on his face. "I take it you haven't…?"

"Heard anything? Found anything?" Will shook his head. It was the same round of questions that they always exchanged, as useless as ever. There was never any other answer because neither Nico nor Hazel had left a trace of their passage. Not to mention that, had Will actually found anything, he would surely have contacted Frank. Frank probably before anyone else, even if they had been at opposite ends of the US. "Same as usual. How about you?"

Frank shook his own head this time and, though he must have anticipated Will's reply, he seemed to slump slightly upon himself, shoulders sagging. "No. Nothing. Not that I really expected to."

They fell into silence for a moment. Will studied Frank as he hadn't before that moment, noticing the slight lines around his eyes that shouldn't be there, a thinness of his cheeks that was only more pronounced for his strong jaw. Frank had been been getting thinner over the years. Not noticeably to anyone that wasn't looking out for it, but Will noticed. He noticed because he had to keep an eye on himself for such deterioration, such disregard for himself that his mother had drawn his attention to at one point only months after he'd lost Nico.

Will had neglected himself. He'd hardly eaten, slept even less, driven himself to exhaustion with both his searching and his half-hearted attention to college. His scholarship was teetering on the brink, he was ignoring most of his friends who weren't demigods, and Naomi had said he even seemed to appear slightly manic most of the time.

It had taken a lot of time for Will to reassert normalcy in himself. Time and the words of his mother that, far from attempting to dissuade him from his searching – for she had enough sense, knew Will well enough, to understand that he wouldn't be budged from his commitment – had liad it flatly on the table, out in the open to be seen and viewed with wincing eyes.

"You'll end up killing yourself, Will," she'd said, her voice hard and with only the barest hint of concern audible through her admonishment.

"No, I won't," Will had replied without even looking to her.

"Yes you will. And disregarding the event of your negligence itself, where would that leave you? I know you care hardly an ounce as much for your studies as you used to," there she'd had to pause as a touch of pain and reproval welled more pronouncedly, "but consider this: if you do neglect yourself, how will you find him?"

Will had turned towards his mother at that, slowly and with a guarded gaze. As always, Naomi never said Nico's name. Will wondered whether it was out of anger, out of her own sadness for his disappearance, or in an attempt to avoid eliciting a flinch from him as he had done so every time someone mentioned Nico's name for that first year. "What are you -?"

"Should you damage yourself into incapacitation, you won't be able to find him. You won't be able to do anything. You'll be useless, to yourself, to him, and to everyone else." His mother had paused, affixing him with a hard, unwavering stare. "And besides, you'll be doing exactly what he told you not to."

She hadn't said Nico's name, but Will still flinched. His mind was drawn unwillingly back to the note that Nico had left him, the note that he carried with him everywhere in an effort to be closer to anything that was Nico. The note that had told him not to die, to live, to finish his studies and to resist attempting to find Nico. And just as Naomi had likely considered it would, Will had been brought up short, a wave of guilt coursing through him.

He didn't want to abide by Nico's orders. It wasn't fair, that he should have to listen to him even when Nico took himself away from him. But in spite of it all, in spite of his senses that told him that Nico didn't have the right to still have a part in his life, to still instil some control upon Will, he did. Not only through the fact that he monopolised Will's mind almost every minute of the day, but because Will couldn't help but adhere to his suggestions. Even when he was absent, even when he couldn't possibly know for sure that Will followed his orders, Will was still trying to make him happy. It was the main reason he continued with his studies at all.

And it was why, with sagging acceptance, Will had caved before his mother's words and nodded obligingly. Just like that, the words " _don't die_ " rung through his mind and Will knew he had to fulfil them to the best of his ability.

"He didn't want me to die."

"No, he didn't," Naomi had nodded.

"And I really will be useless to him, _when_ I find him," he'd continued in a murmur.

"You will."

"Then… I guess I'll just have to try harder."

Naomi's jaw had tightened, her face and eyes hardening slightly at his words. Will had known that such wasn't what she had intended, that his resolution to push himself harder hadn't been what she'd been hoping for, but by the same token he'd seen the moment that she'd accepted it as 'good enough'. His mother had nodded, releasing a sigh that effectively drew their brief confrontation to a close. "Good. That's good then. Now, come and get some dinner."

Will had attempted to live by his resolution as much as he was physically able to. He ate mechanically, he slept when he could manage – something was a struggle, between his hours at the hospital the monster hunting, the searching, that he still attempted to pursue as much as he could – and he spoke to his friends. Sometimes. Even Will could tell that he did so minimally, that those he interacted with that didn't know the fullness of his situation, that weren't demigods or his mother, didn't really understand. But he tried, and even if he wasn't all that close to them, there were colleagues, fellow residents at the hospital, who he would almost call friends.

He was trying. It was a struggle, but he was trying.

Will saw much of himself in Frank, and not only the distraction of having Hazel on the edges of his thoughts at every moment. Will knew only too well what that was like to be haunted by a veritable ghost. It was in his gaze, in his attitude, in the moments that he would occasionally become distracted by a passing sight, as though it triggered a memory that caused pain and longing to surface. And he saw it in Frank's weariness, in his thinning, in the quietness that was even more pronounced than Frank usually was.

Leaning across the table slightly, Will tapped a finger idly on the black surface. "How are you, Frank? Really? Other than just work, how are you _really?_ "

Frank raised his gaze to meet Will's. Will saw the moment that he shifted from nearly lying, from offering false reassurance, and he sunk heavily into himself once more. "I'm tired, Will. I'm so tired and I'm… I'm…"

"I know," Will said quietly, nodding. He really did. He understood probably better than anyone else how Frank wanted it just to stop, to stop the thoughts and the memories and the longing for someone who was no longer there. How he wanted a break, wanted to rest, but never to give up. Never that. Frank, just like Will, wanted the person he loved _back_. Not even the way that they were, not even to have everything as it was – Will wanted Nico back, just like Frank longed for Hazel. "I really do know."

Frank gave another small smile, the weariness that he'd evidently kept hidden when Leo was with them seeping forth. The smile faded quickly, however, and he raised a hand to rub at the creases between his eyebrows. "It's just never-ending. And the slightest thing will tip it off, too."

"What happened?" Will asked, sympathy – or perhaps it was empathy – welling within him. He could recognise Frank's words for what they were.

Frank shook his head, his smile returning with self-deprecation this time. "It was stupid, really –"

"It's not stupid."

"This time was. You'd think I'd have been able to pick when it was just a coincidence and when it was actually her by now."

"What happened?" Will prompted again, folding his arms on the table before him.

Frank sighed in a heavy gush of air. "I saw this thing on the news. Something about this cache of rare gemstones found in a previously unfounded area in Louisiana – Louisiana palm, or something or other." He shook his head again, self-deprecation welling more pronouncedly. "I should have known, really. That sort of thing's happened enough times that I _should_ have known. But it's just… I thought maybe, for some reason, with it being in Louisiana, what with Hazel originally from New Orleans…"

He trailed off and the melancholy that Frank seemed even more susceptible to at times than Will drew forth. Will reached forwards and rested a hand upon his friend's arm, attempting a smile once more and once more failing. "You shouldn't beat yourself up for it, Frank. It was just a mistake. I've made my own fair share of them too." He thrust aside the memory of his visits to Calverton National Cemetery in Queens, even chasing after the old caretaker Mr Browning in foolish hopes that, being the largest in the US and Nico being linked to the Underworld as he was, he might find something. Just as he'd chased after ghost and zombie sightings, called through exorcist hotlines, followed the trail of strange shadow sightings – all in the hopes that he might find _some_ thing.

He never did. He knew _exactly_ what Frank was going through in this instance.

"It wouldn't have been quite so bad," Frank continued, talking more to himself than to Will in a low voice, "if I hadn't been so stupid about it."

"What do you mean?"

"I literally dropped everything, Will." He raised his gaze from the table to Will's and rolled his eyes in a gesture that could have been amused if it wasn't so pained. "My team thought I'd disappeared, which I guess I sort of had. It took me a couple of weeks to actually track them down again afterwards."

Will opened his mouth to offer reassurances before closing it once more. Frank wasn't looking for reassurance. He was merely stating the reality of what had happened, reprimanding himself baselessly for what he couldn't control. It didn't help that Will knew he scolded himself just as fiercely when he acted out as such – even worse on the one instance he'd taken a spontaneous trip to Oregon on a lead that had similarly proved fruitless. He'd vanquished a fair number of monsters on the way, but of Nico there had been no sign.

"I just wish she knew," Frank murmured, falling back into his own thoughts once more. "She wouldn't, would she? She would know that I would rather put up with any danger as long as she was still with me, right?"

Will could only shake his head. They had long since deduced that whatever unfounded fear, whatever thoughts of protectiveness that Nico had written about, that had driven him away from Will, were likely the same reasons that Hazel had done so. Stupid reasons, but reasons nonetheless. Will had to agree with Frank in his words and sentiment; how could Nico not realise that he'd rather face the entirety of Tartarus than have him leave? He was only more certain of the fact after three years of Nico's absence.

"I don't know," he muttered in reply.

"If only I could talk to her, just once. You know I still try and Iris-message her at least once a week? And she's never been good with phones but I try that too. I don't know if she's just ignoring me or if she's actually unable to answer my calls, and you know that's the _worst part_."

Will nodded, dropping his gaze to his hands. "I know. Just wanting to know that he's okay –"

"- that she doesn't need my help –"

"- that he isn't lying wounded and bleeding somewhere, surrounded by monsters, or –" Will choked himself off, as much because he couldn't speak another word around the tightening of his throat as because he knew that voicing such fears wouldn't help any. "I know, Frank. I try to call him all the time too. He doesn't pick up his phone or answer my Iris-messages. I even managed to get a hold of Hermes one time and asked him if he could just send a message to him but he couldn't do it. What does that mean? He didn't say he was… that Nico _couldn't_ receive a message, just that he couldn't deliver it."

Frank gave a helpless shrug. "I don't know. I've tried going through Mercury too, but…" He shrugged again. "I don't know."

They sat in silence for a moment, mulling over their exchange. It was painful to talk about, painful in the considerations it aroused, but Will actually felt better for the pain. As though he'd sliced open a wound, letting it breathe and seep out the infectious, noxious pus from within. It hurt, but it still helped to talk with Frank about it, to know he wasn't entirely alone. Even if it was just a little bit.

With an effort, Will drew himself from his thoughts. He raised his gaze back to Frank, where his friend still stared unblinkingly, glassy eyed at his clasped hands. They were held so tightly together that his knuckles protruded, straining his skin white. "You've got to take care of yourself though, Frank."

There was another moment of pause before Frank seemed to swim back from the depths of his thoughts and blink into reality. He glanced up at Will, frowning slightly. "What do you mean?"

Will gestured towards him in an encompassing motion. He tried to keep his voice calm, mellow, knowing that, placid as Frank was, he didn't take kindly to people suggesting he was neglecting himself, or that he should focus a little less on _Hazel_ and more upon his own health. "You're looking thinner, Frank. And tired. Other people might not see it –"

"I'm fine," Frank said in a voice that suggested he'd used the same excuse countless times. He didn't sound angry, or even particularly annoyed, but there was a very definite sense that he was brushing aside Will's concern. Not cruelly, but as a necessity. "Really, thanks, Will, but I'm fine."

Will paused, sucking his tooth for a moment as he watched his friend shift uncomfortably. "You're not. And you know it."

Frank evidently heard the no-nonsense tone of Will's voice. He finally lifted his gaze from his hands and offered a feeble smile. "I know. But I'm fine. And most of the time I just don't feel like eating."

"I get that," Will nodded, for he truly did. "Maybe try eating with other people?"

"I don't much like being around other people a lot of the time either," Frank replied a little ruefully. "Honestly, I'm surprised that my team still puts up with me. I can't imagine why."

"Maybe because you're a hard worker? And they realise that you're withdrawn because you're going through something that you don't want to talk about?"

"I can only hope." Frank met Will's eyes and he saw the softness of gratitude within them. "Thanks though, Will. I know what you said last time and it still actually helps."

Will nodded. He'd practically relayed his mother's argument to Frank word for word and, just as it had with Will, it seemed to fortify him somewhat. "Just make sure you keep an eye on things. Just… I don't know, go and chase some monsters or something when you need to vent rather than overthinking things."

"You're telling _me_ not to overthink things," Frank said a little teasingly. "The ultimate over-thinker that you are?"

"Shut up," Will replied, though he managed a smile himself. Briefly.

There was another pause in which Will had to wonder how Leo was taking so long – really, did he think he was actually being subtle at all? Finally, Frank spoke up once more. "You too, though, Will."

Will had been watching Mina at the milk frother, the loud whistle hissing through the room. The tables had begun to fill marginally, with coffees, cakes and tarts being afforded to the occasional passer-by. Lou Ellen's coffee, grown by her Roman correspondent who was a son of Demeter – or Ceres, as he preferred it – was an earthy and unique blend with just a hint of spiciness that drew the watering mouths of demigods and mortals alike. The _Golden Nectar_ would never be strapped for clients. Will turned towards Frank at his words, raising an eyebrow. "Me too what?"

"You look after yourself too."

"I'm going okay at the moment," he replied, trying to instil some sincerity into his words. He wasn't sure how well he managed.

Frank shook his head a little sadly. "It's been a couple of months since I last saw you, Will. You're different."

Will frowned, raising his hand to prop up his chin thoughtfully. " _I've_ changed? How do you mean?"

"I mean sadder."

"We seem to be peas in a pod in that case, then," Will replied, striving for light-heartedness that he was fairly certain he failed at attaining.

Frank shook his head once more. "Maybe. Sort of. But it's more noticeable on you."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean, you were always the bright, bubbly kind of person. Everyone always thought you were sort of the epitome of the son of Apollo, except that, well," Frank twisted his mouth with a touch of amusement. "You have at least a bit more sense than your dad does."

"Thanks, Frank. I appreciate it."

"But now," Frank continued, barely acknowledging Will's sarcasm, "it's like your light's been turned down. You need to look after yourself too."

"I do," Will said defensively. He'd never been good at having others call his health to attention. Ironically, he knew, given that he was a doctor himself, but it was the truth. "I'm keeping myself healthy, exercise when I can, eat enough, sleep enough –"

"I doubt that," Frank murmured.

"- and you'll be happy to know that I even get my bloods taken regularly just to keep tabs on things. I'm perfectly fine."

"You don't smile."

Frank's words drew Will up short. He blinked. "What?"

"Your smile. There's a reason you were awarded 'Camps Best Smiler' three years in a row, Will." Frank gave his own sad smile, as though in wistful commiseration. "It's like you've lost it."

Will stared at his friend for a moment, speechless. His smile? What? He'd been smiling that day, hadn't he? At least, Will thought he'd been smiling. He'd made an effort to try, at least. "I…"

"It's alright, Will," Frank hastened to reassure him. It was his turn to pat Will's arm. A little awkwardly, but the heart was definitely there. "Seriously, if anyone can sympathise I'd say it would be me. Just… keep an eye out for yourself. Take your own advice: go beat some monsters every now and then, yeah?"

Will attempted a chuckle that he hoped sound moderately sincere and nodded. "Thanks, Frank. I'll bear that in mind."

"Then that's all I can hope for," Frank said with his own nod. "Keep in touch though, while I'm gone, won't you? We won't leave it so long next time."

"Yeah, for sure," Will muttered, already dropping his gaze back to the table before him.

Fortunately, Leo returned in that moment to alleviate the upwelling of tension from Will's resistance. He arrived with a burst of merriment and noise, as he always did, a smile plastered upon his face that Will, with Frank's words at the forefront of his mind, took far too much notice of. He fell into his seat once more with a scrape of his chair. "You know, I'm still a bit peckish, I think. How about you two?"

Before either Will or Frank could answer, Leo had raised himself slightly in his seat and called across the café. "Hey, Mina? Can we get three more of those muffins if you have any?"

"Sure thing, Leo," Mina called back as she poured an intricate pattern into the coffee of the waiting customer. "Won't be a second."

"Yeah, no problems," Leo replied, sinking back into his seat. He turned towards Will and Frank once more, a wide smile upon his face. "You know, I just had this most ingenious thought –"

"While you were in the bathroom?" Frank asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Hey, don't knock the golden throne. Some of my best inventions come from when I'm swinging my legs."

"That was an image I really didn't need," Will snorted, a twitch of a smile playing across his lips.

Leo adopted an expression of utter affront before disregarding Will's words and jumping into his explanation. Will settled back to listen to his friend's animated chatter; there was something to be said for the ever-joyful, the vibrant and the superficial, even if half of the time it was simply Leo putting on a persona. A glance at Frank suggested Will wasn't the only one to think so.

* * *

Will slipped his jacket over his shoulders, shrugging it comfortably and zipping it up over his scrubs before reaching for his scarf. The locker rooms at the hospital were largely empty but for the odd nurse or resident similarly finishing their shift for the night and readying themselves to face the blast of winter that awaited them just outside the doors.

It was only just after six o'clock but Will was more than keen to be gone. It had been a long day and, though he wasn't quite as exhausted as he might have been after a day in the studio or abuzz with more patients than he could handle, he was more than ready to take a break. Will loved his work, but after three eleven hour shifts that week already he was finding himself longing for his bed. The earlier nights didn't help the matter much; there was simply something more tiring about returning home from work when night had already fallen. Maybe it was just because he was a child of Apollo?

Slinging his bag over his shoulder as he slipped on his gloves, Will paused long enough to snap his locker closed and head down the aisle of the staff quarters. He nodded to Kelsey in farewell, paused as a familiar figure whose name he couldn't recall – someone from orthopaedics, he thought – nearly backed into him, distracted by talking to his friend, then slipped through the door. Out. He was done. Though he didn't begrudge overseeing the junior residents – how could he, when he had been just like them only years before? – it was a relief to escape from the over-eager, slightly frazzled faces as they raced up to him with questions tripping from their tongues.

Stepping out of the front door of the hospital, Will paused to attune himself to the sudden chill. Christmas was just around the corner, barely a month away, and winter was making a last ditch effort to make the entire city miserable for the coming festive season. Will wasn't really that much of a Christmas person – he used to be, but wasn't so much anymore – and the weight of his work on his shoulders, barely more than a day or two of break over the period, sort of bereft him of what joviality he might have assumed. Will supposed he could take some extra time off, given that he had more than his entitled quota clocked up, but he didn't particularly want to. More time on his hands just meant that he had more time to think.

Will didn't like to have too much time to think.

Shivering, he turned on his heel and made his way from the vibrant lights of the front of the hospital, illuminating the concrete entrance and roadside beyond, in the direction of the station. The streets were still thick with cars – or taxis, more correctly – and buses, the sidewalks clogged with pedestrians bundled as thickly as Will was himself against the cold so that they all appeared at least twice their normal size. Will weaved through them, his lengthy stride chewing up the snow-slick pavement and breath puffing in smoky clouds around him. It was a bit of a hike from the hospital to the subway, but despite the cold, Will didn't mind. Not that much, anyway. Still, he was grateful to dive into the relative warmth of 168th Street station. It was dimly lit, underground and echoing, but the huddle of bodies made up for any dankness that it might harbour.

Will had barely made it onto the platform when his phone, despite the feeble service of the underground, chimed a ring. His phone that he so rarely used and only when on the move to avoid the attention of monsters that it so often drew. Fingers fumbling into his pocket, Will frowned at the screen for a moment before feeling his eyebrows rise in surprise. A jab to accept and he lifted it to his ear.

"Kayla, what are you doing calling me?"

Kayla, voice faintly distorted by distance and electronics, sighed as though he had said something foolish. "Really, do I need an excuse to call you?"

"Of course you do. We never call one another. What, were you a bit light on with _drachma_ 's for an Iris-message or something?"

"Are you calling me cheap, Will?"

"No, I'm calling you broke."

"Hm," she hummed. "Fair call. But anyway, ignoring your rudeness, I've got a proposition for you."

"That sounds dangerous," Will said, casting a glance around himself. He'd hardly been talking, or standing still, for long enough to have drawn the attention of any monsters, but it was never too early to check.

"Don't dis my suggestions before you've heard them," Kayla continued scoldingly. "I've got a mission for us that I thought you might like to join in on."

"Me? Why?"

"Er… because you're my friend who I haven't seen in weeks, and monster hunting is one of the best ways to reconnect." The way she spoke rung thickly with the unspoken "of course, idiot".

"You haven't asked me to go hunting monsters with you in ages," Will said.

"I know. That's why I'm asking you know. It's a bit of a trek, but I figured, if you're up for it…?"

Will's immediate response was to deny Kayla's offer. He was tired. He was too busy. He didn't want to take a trip from the city when he had to work, if not early the next day, then at least tomorrow afternoon. But his words were stilted as memory of his discussion with Frank only days before rose to the forefront of his mind. The memory of his own suggestion.

" _Go and chase some monsters or something when you need to vent rather than overthinking things_."

Will gave a huff of self-deprecating laughter. He really should listen to his own words more often.

"Will?" Kayla's voice interrupted his thoughts.

"Sorry," Will hastened to reply. "I just got distracted."

"Really? How rude. And when I'm talking to you and everything. If you don't _want_ to – I mean, I think you should come along, take a break for a bit and all, but I won't force you –"

"Sure, Kayla, I'll come."

There was a pause on the other end of the phone. "Really?"

"You sound surprised. I could almost be offended by that. What was the point in asking me if you didn't think I'd come in the first place?"

"No, no, it's not – I didn't mean –" Kayla gave a frustrated sigh. "Great. Sounds great. We're using my car – Austin's coming too –"

"Naturally."

"Naturally, of course."

"Can three people even fit in your car?" Will asked sceptically.

"Ha ha, very funny. You're in the back seat."

"What back seat? You mean the boot?"

"Hilarious, Will. I'm crying from laughter."

Will gave a small smile, glancing over his shoulder at a loud burst of noise that proved to be nothing more than a group of teenagers slipping down the steps to the platform. "Want me to come and meet you at Camp?"

"No, it's okay. It'd be a wasted trip seeing as we're going the other direction."

"Where've you got in mind?"

"Caguya Lake."

Will frowned. "You mean… not up near Auburn?"

"That's the one. Got some monster activity there lately, apparently."

"That's quite a drive."

"Mmhm,' Kayla agreed. "About four and a half hours of it –"

"Which is more like six in your car"

"- so that's why we're leaving now and we're leaving at night," Kayla finished, deliberately ploughing through Will's interruption. "I'll swing past yours in say an hour? Would that give you enough time?"

"Yeah, sure," Will nodded. He wasn't sure if he'd come to regret going, whether it was a bad idea to put sleep aside for the night to spend it with his siblings and venting any tensions through his bow or quarterstaff. But he'd already made his decision and really, Kayla was right. He hadn't been out with them for a long time. It had been weeks since he'd even spared his bow a glance.

"Make sure you bring a full quiver, alright, Will," Kayla added. "I think we'll need it this time. Got some bird-like monsters to be shooting down."

"That was one time, Kayla," Will sighed, rolling his eyes at the memory of the incident nearly five years before where he'd grabbed the _wrong_ quiver that was barely even half full.

"Yeah, and you haven't repeated it because I keep reminding you, right?"

"If it makes you happy to think that's the reason why, then I won't object."

"So good of you, Will. Righto, I'll see you in a bit."

"Yeah, see you."

The line cut out with a beep and Will slipped his phone back into his pocket just as the rushing roar of wind announced the arrival of the train. Shoving his hands into his coat, he stepped forwards alongside every other commuter to await the opening of doors and the moment of pushing and shoving and objecting to the efforts of those around them to hasten aboard.

Maybe it was a bad idea to go monster hunting. Will had a job, he had responsibilities, and if he wasn't working he was usually thinking of possible locations that he might find Nico. But considering the enthusiasm in his sister's voice, he couldn't think it was altogether wrong to take a break.

Just this once. Nico had told him not to die, but that didn't mean he couldn't still chase down some monsters. Did it?


	4. Chapter 4 - Hunting

**Chapter 4: Hunting**

Kayla's mini puttered to a stop with a sound that Will could have sworn was a sigh of relief. Five and a quarter hours of driving – ironically exactly halfway between Will's and Kayla's speculations – found them on the edge of Cayuga Lake, the modest hamlet of Seneca Falls at their backs. The night was dark but not quite black for the glow of electrical lighting peering like curious eyes from curtained windows and street lamps illuminating the roads. Where they parked was quiet, however, devoid of the distant sounds of midnight traffic. It was almost peaceful.

Will unfolded himself with difficulty from the car, stretching his shoulders after the long drive. He swore he'd been hunching the entire way, and for once he was actually relieved to be out in the chill, winter air, even if it did immediately set a shiver through his shoulders. There was only so much two jackets, a scarf, hat and gloves could do, and that was to say nothing of his three pairs of socks and thick boots.

Tugging his bow and quiver from the back seat after him, Will slung them over his shoulder and turned towards Kayla and Austin as they too clambered from the car. "I'm driving on the way back," he said, rubbing his neck to relieve it of its stiffness.

"No way in Hades," Kayla replied. "My car, I'm driving."

"You should probably take a break, though," Austin pointed out diplomatically. "Ten hours driving in a twenty-four hour period? That's a little dangerous."

"Says he who was nearly bouncing at the prospect of shooting down some demon harpies tonight," Kayla said with a smirk.

"I wasn't bouncing. It's called moderate enthusiasm."

"Yeah, right. Moderate." Striding away from the car along the side of the road, Kayla fumbled in her cavernous jacket pockets and withdrew a flashlight. It clicked on and immediately illuminated the snow before her. She beckoned with an arm towards Will and Austin before continuing ahead, slipping slightly on the slick ground underfoot.

Will turned towards his brother with a small smile. Kayla was always enthusiastic about fighting these days. Will attributed it to her relatively sedate lifestyle outside of camp antics, though out of the majority of demigods who had chosen to make their own way he felt that the very fact that Kayla spent most of her days teaching both mortals and demigods how to shoot a bow at her archery school should have alleviated some of her frustrations. Apparently not. "Shall we?"

Austin, his face shadowed by the hood of his jacket so that only the end of his long cornrows peeked out gave a muffled shrug. "She's the one with the flashlight. I don't want to get lost by being left behind, even with the street lights." He picked up his feet, adjusting his own bow and quiver on his shoulder, and hastened in Kayla's wake. Will had to admit he had a point, though with the vibrancy of Kayla's hatless head and the cursing as she inevitably slipped once more on the snow he doubted it would be possible to lose her, even in the darkness.

 _Besides_ , he though, _if I do get lost in the dark it's not like I don't have my own light. Though having to take my gloves off might be a bit of a pain._

It was dark and cold, and even with Kayla's flashlight it was difficult to see anything in the spaces between the street lights. But even so, Will couldn't find it within himself to begrudge the situation. The fresh air, the openness of the surrounds, the companionship of two of his best friends who, he guilty realised, he really hadn't seen all that much of lately, had its own sense of relief. True, most of his time Will preferred to spend at work, or scanning the news or demigod gossip for leads, but maybe… maybe it was a good thing to get out every now and again. He was feeling markedly more positive after stepping away from the thrumming hub of the never-sleeping city that was New York.

Or maybe that was more of a result of the catnap he'd managed in the back seat of Kayla's car, a catnap that was also likely the cause of the crick in his neck and the stiffness in his shoulders.

Cayuga Lake was a sheet of reflective blackness in the night, barely visible through the trees. Will drew his gaze along the pristine surface as they approached, trudging through the trees at the roadside with his breath fogging the air before him. The sounds of night life echoed, of owls hooting and the rustle of trees and nocturnal critters hungry enough to brave the cold of winter to scamper over branches and crunch through the thick blanket of snow.

"How far off is the Montezuma Refuge," Austin called to Kayla, referring to the conversation they'd shared briefly in the car. Kayla, as the initiator of the endeavour, was supposed to hold the knowledge of their whereabouts and of what they faced. "We are actually going into the refuge, right?"

"Depends," Kayla called back, disappearing entirely behind a tree in all but the radiant glow of her flashlight.

"On what?"

"On whether we see come across any harpies before that."

"Do you even know that they are harpies?" Will asked, hand rising to his bow in response to even the mention of monsters.

"Well, what else could they be?" Will could almost see her shrug, despite the blurriness of her figure. "Reports on the mortals' news of ridiculously big bald eagles flying in groups in winter when they should be basically disappeared, and you don't think it's harpies?"

"It could be something else," Will suggested. "Like gryphons or something."

"Or sphinxes," Austin added.

"Or pegasus, even."

"Or some kind of dragon-type monster."

"Alright, alright, I get it," Kayla sighed, pausing in step to turn towards Will and Austin. Only the pale oval of her face could be seen, the short waterfall of her ponytail perched so high on her head that it flipped over her forehead a little. "I just assumed it was harpies because harpies are more common than most of those other monsters."

Austin glanced over his shoulder towards Will. He gave a shrug. "Fair call. I'd say that's a fair call."

"Even if it might be wrong," Will said with a nod. "It probably is wrong."

"Yeah, it's probably best to keep our expectations low. You don't want to get too caught upon in the idea of shooting at something the size of a harpy when it turns out to be a giant wyvern or something."

"Yes, best to keep expectations low."

"Shut up, the pair of you," Kayla grumbled, turning on her heel and continuing along the road. Will and Austin trailed dutifully behind her, Will biting back a snort of laughter as Kayla nearly slipped in step. She really would always be appalling at walking through snow.

The sharp, clean scent of the frozen lake was flooding Will's nostrils when he heard the first cry. It was inhumane, definitely animalistic, but unlike any that Will had heard before. It most certainly didn't belong to a bald eagle. He paused in step in the glow of a streetlight, tilting his head to listen even as his siblings slowed and did the same.

"That doesn't sound like a harpy," he murmured. The depth of the cry – a screech, really – was too deep and too resounding to be made by one of the winged chicken-women. Not to mention that it echoed slightly, as though through a loudspeaker.

"What makes a sound like that?" Austin asked.

"Not anything I've heard before."

"Shit. Don't tell me I've signed us up for something really dangerous," Kayla muttered.

Will glanced towards her. In the yellowish light from above he could see her face clearly enough. A slightly worried frown touched her forehead, and she cast a faintly apologetic glance towards Will and Austin. Will shook his head, brushing the unspoken apology aside. "Not a problem. Let's face it, if it's a monster, no matter whether it's an angry harpy or something worse, someone would have to vanquish it."

"Unless it's not dangerous," Austin pointed out. "Which they might not be."

His words were rendered moot when a succession of cries wrought the air. As if to directly dispute his supposition, the sound of smacking and a faint, distant crumbling as though a pair of rocks had been tossed violently against one another echoed through the night. An instant later, a moan and the distinctive sound of a cracking tree and its subsequent collapse boomed through the forest. Another cry, a screech and a sound that could have almost been an iron weapon slashed against metal, and then there was silence.

Austin winced slightly, unslinging his bow from his shoulder. "Well, maybe not."

"We'd probably have to go and check it out anyway," Will nodded.

"Better safe than sorry," Kayla agreed. Will agreed with her sentiment. Though monsters didn't usually attack mortals, they could still wreak havoc upon residencies and dwelling _around_ mortals. Will following suit as Kayla unslung her bow and a moment later they continued their way down the road. All three of them were distinctly more wary this time, arrows nocked loosely and eyes peering into the darkness beyond the glow of Kayla's flashlight and the streetlamps.

They found their fallen tree. It was a huge tree, a giant of the forest, and had fallen directly across the road like a barricade. After a brief attempt at trying to budge it, Will suggested that they abandon their efforts and make a move onwards. He couldn't help but glance uneasily at the deep scars hashed along the length of the trunk, some scored an inch or two into the wood.

"What makes gouges like that?" Kayla murmured, more to herself than in actual query. Will and Austin could only shrug.

They didn't have long to ponder, however. Whether it was the natural attraction of monsters to demigods or mere happenstance, the creatures appeared through the dark blanket of night above the road but minutes beyond the fallen tree. They were indeed flying, but –

"I don't think they're harpies, Kayla."

"Yes, thank you, Austin, I can see that."

Will didn't say a word. His attention was turned fully towards the approaching monsters who, though at first when at a distance seemed almost oblivious to their presence, abruptly unleashed a chorus of cries and trained their focus upon them. They screeched piercingly loud, and upon sight Will could discern just why they sounded like they did.

The birds were huge, at least the size of a pegasus, and roughly eagle shaped. Their feathers, however, appeared to be made from some metallic substance that caught and reflected even at a distance the light of the street lamp Will and his friends had stopped beneath. Sharp talons flexed as they drew nearer, cruel beaks curved like the downward tusks of an elephant, and though he couldn't really see them, Will fathomed he could discern a savage gleam to their eyes, a delight in falling upon prey.

With one fluid motion, Will raised his bow, drew his sights and fired. His arrow soared through the air and struck the lead eagle – was it just an eagle? A _ridiculously_ large eagle?

The sound of the metallic point of his arrow rung like steel on steel as it struck. It embedded, but even at a distance Will could seen that it hadn't gone very deep. The eagle shrieked in what could have been fury as much as pain, but it hardly seemed to slow for the arrow protruding from its wing. Worse than that, it now seemed intent. Focused, it and its fellows. If Will had suspected there to be a predatory gleam in their eyes before, he was certain of it now.

They flew like arrows themselves. Darting in whizzing flight, like planes skimming along a runway, the flock pelted down the road towards Will and his siblings. Will had time to fire one more arrow, Austin and Kayla one each themselves, before he had to take cover. In an abrupt drop to the ground, his knees immediately becoming wet from the ice, Will ducked his head and could swear he felt the kiss of talons brush the hairs on his head, just barely missing. A burst of his battle-ready adrenaline, urging him towards flight as much as fight, pumped rapidly through his limbs and fingers.

Thank the Gods for his demigod blood. It was looking as though he would need it.

The eagles had, blessedly, missed all three of them. Will glanced towards Austin and Kayla as he scrambled to his feet, sparing another glance for the flock. Like a crew of fighter planes, they whipped the length of the road, speeding away to at least four hundred feet along the stretch of car-less bitumen, before turning. Curving, rising upwards, they coiled with the fluidity of a school of fish and made their soaring way backwards again. A chorus of metallic, echoing screeches sounded their charge.

Will did a quick count. Ten. There were at least ten eagles. Cursing, he tapped the end of his bow twice onto the ground so that it snapped into a quarterstaff with a _twang_ of released string before glancing towards his siblings. "I have no idea what they are –"

"You and me both," Kayla muttered.

"- but they don't seem all that inclined to falling to arrows."

"Mine pierced its wing," Austin said shortly, his eyes drawn to the rapidly approaching monsters. "It dipped for a second and seems to have lost some height."

Will nodded. He'd noticed that too. "Right. So if you two can still keep shooting at them, I'll try and hit them when they're down. Sound like a plan?"

Austin and Kayla barely had time to nod before the eagles were upon them. With a pair of _twangs_ as arrows were released, they dodged to the side as Will swept forwards, swinging his quarterstaff in a windmill and striking at the two eagles that had faltered beneath the attack. He struck them in a quick succession of bats, felling the first to the ground while the other shrieked and warbled in deafening cries before taking off after its siblings. Will swept his staff around above the felled monster, golden beak snapping like a rabid dog at his ankles, and stuck it a crushing blow to the skull. The impact of the Celestial bronze welded into his staff resounded like a struck bell before, with a crunch of metal and a screech of fury, the giant dissipated into dust the smell of burnt iron.

Will swung his attention to the flock of eagles once more. They hadn't retreated as far this time, were arcing in a curved loop less than two hundred feet away. Austin and Kayla's bows snapped out one shot, two, before the nine remaining birds were upon them once more. Will dodged their snapping claws, struck once more, following their strategy. It worked just as well as the first time, the monster bursting into dust with an enraged shriek. Except that this time Austin loosed a cry of pain.

Spinning towards him as he stood over the dusty remains of the shattered bird, even in the darkness Will could make out the bloody score of talon marks along the side of his head, hood flung open and gaping. "Austin!" Kayla cried as she launched herself to her feet from where she'd dropped and raised her bow for another attempt at the returning onrush of eagles. Will cried out something similar, but his words were lost in the screech of deep, avian rage.

Again and again the assault came, swooping strike after swooping strike. Will dodged and ducked, struck at the birds that Kayla felled, and though Austin made a brave attempt at climbing to his feet once more, re-hefting his bow, he was clearly shaken. Some of the times Will managed to fell a bird, and on one instance Kayla even made a shot through the eye that burst the monster into dust as it flew. It hardly seemed to make a difference, though.

They were scraped. They were gouged. None quite as badly as the first that had befallen Austin, but within minutes Will was wincing beneath bloody gashes along his arms, his fingers scored and a bruise forming on his head from where one eagle had whacked him with a wing. A metal wing, it seemed, his head with still bemoaning the fact. The usual spark of fear and worry surfaced with each sting of his wounds, but Will managed to thrust it aside with every returning flight of the eagles, with every glimpse of Austin wavering yet still attempting to fire his arrows, of Kayla wiping at a trickle of blood from her forehead as it tried to blind her.

 _Why do we do this to ourselves_? He had the split second to wonder before another charge of birds saw him parrying aside the blows and, with a shout of triumph, downing another bird. It crumpled in a warbling scream beneath his staff, bursting into dust.

Unfortunately, that was apparently the final straw for the birds. At four left to their number, they were quite visibly furious, their snapping talons swiping with more pronounced intent. Eyes previously blackened by shadows and the darkness of night seemed to shine fiery gold, and they arced in a communal sweep barely fifty paces away each passing. It was as they fell upon Will and his siblings with renewed vigour, without mercy, that he realised they had bitten off more than they could chew.

They were most definitely in trouble.

The eagles threw caution to the wind. No more coordinated flights, no more synchronous strikes of bared talons, no more lengthy moments of respite for both demigods and monsters as they redirected their course and returned for another charge. The giant metal birds fell upon Will, Austin and Kayla, and with shrieks of rage that could surely have been heard from Long Island they attacked. They battered furiously with their wings, striking one another as often as their targets. Their claws flexed and struck, a handful of curved knifes sharpened to points. Springing like yo-yos they would descend, even fall to the ground as their plummeting attacks bypassed a target, before leaping into the air once more. Then down again, and up, and down upon the demigods with a screech and a slashing of knives.

Will fought in a frenzy of defence. He batted the monster's attacks aside but barely had a chance to attempt his own. The eagles seemed almost careless of accidentally striking their peers in their sheer fury, their desire to smite the demigods. Will ducked and rolled on the icy ground, wincing as a slashing talon cut through his thick jacket and grazed his shoulder. He leapt to his feet to parry another attack, then launched himself towards where Austin and Kayla stood, parrying with drawn sword and bow respectively. Not that either did all that much good.

Rising fear welled palpably through the air as is did when confronted with a more fearsome foe. They stood back to back but the attacks still fell. Will could hardly see for the combination of darkness, the jerking descents of the eagles with their flashing, metallic wings, their swiping limbs, the snapping jaws. The smell of blood – of Will's blood, of Austin's and Kayla's – filled the air with the scent of stinking metal, as though burned by the strikes of weapons against feathers.

They were losing. Will could see that. He could see it, could feel the certainty in the foreboding welling within his chest, but it wasn't like he was going to stop fighting. It wasn't like he could.

In was a combination luck and the fortunate snap of a sideways wing that felled one of the eagles in a tumble to the ground. Will, bent nearly double for a blow to the head that had his ears ringing, swung towards the struggling monster as it attempted to right itself. Leaping forwards, he raised his staff and, in a swinging strike, smashed it over its head.

The crumple of metal sounded like a truck impacting a brick wall. Unfortunately, it didn't kill the bird immediately. Twisted beak opening wide, the creature loosed a high, wailing cry, higher than any of those that had been before, and screamed in fury, or pain, or despair. It was a sound that was both ear-splitting and faintly heartbreaking, like a child crying for its mother, and Will had to physically clap his hands over his still-ringing ears as he fell to his knees to protect them from shattering too. An instant later, in a sharp snap, the wail ceased. A burst of metallic splinters later, and the monster disappeared into dust.

The three remaining eagles withdrew with warbling cries of their own that mimicked their vanquished fellow. Not entirely, but their ascent above the streetlamp above afforded Will a moment of respite to scramble to his feet, to stumble to his brother and sister and to regain his grounded stance. He was panting – he hadn't even realised how heavily he was breathing – and where not even an hour before he'd been bemoaning the aches of a stiff neck and shoulders he was now sagging beneath cuts and bruises, what could have been a sprained ankle and what felt like a dislocation of his left shoulder that had been popped back into place somewhere through the fight. It still burned

"We're in trouble," Austin said. The slurring of his words concerned Will more than the words themselves.

Kayla glanced towards him, her worried frown almost lost beneath the caked blood streaking half of her face. She opened her mouth to reply, but was cut off when a shriek ripped through the air.

It was a different call to those that had been heard before. Somehow, it seemed even louder than those of the metal birds, deeper, vaster, like the blasting whir of an aeroplane. Will snapped his attention skyward, hefting his quarterstaff even as dread settled into his gut.

 _Oh, this can't be good._

For once that night, he was right. The monster was barely noticeable at first, its size hidden by the darkness of night. But then Will realised it was only unnoticeable because it was so large, dark plumage lost to the shadows of the sky but blotting out what little could be seen of the stars. It had to be at least as large as a fighter jet, the roaring wail it loosed just as loud as the blaring of an engine. It swept towards Will, towards them all, in a soaring fall as daunting as an avalanche. Will barely had time to push Austin and Kayla in one direction before he threw himself the opposite way and crashed to the ground in a scraping tumble of road-burn.

The crash of the landing bird rumbled the very earth.

Pushing himself onto his hands, Will glanced over his shoulder, wincing and biting his teeth against the pain of torn skin. He immediately wished he hadn't. He would almost have rather not known what he was facing. The monster was terrifying for its size, reminiscent of the smaller but still huge eagles that had retreated moments before only in shape. Its feathers were metal, but of a deeply burnished bronze rather than dirty, ruddy copper. A mane-like crest fanned around the creature's head and its eyes gleamed a vivid, luminescent gold that mirrored its beak, lambent in the night. Talons raking deep troughs in the road were the matte silver of steel, visibly as sharp as a Celestial bronze sword and just as long.

Swinging its head towards Austin and Kayla, then towards Will, it opened its mouth and loosed a screech so bellowing, so loud and rumbling and _physically powerful_ that Will could almost see the sound waves warping the air. It sent a lance of pain through his head and he actually dropped his staff to clutch at his ears.

There was no way they could beat something like that. Surely, there was no way –

With another landslide of convulsive shaking, piercing Will with a glare, the giant bird snapped its wings in a downward sweep and leapt back into the air, pelting into the sky. Will barely had time to climb to scramble his feet, to grab his quarterstaff, before the other eagles descended in the giant's place. He had a moment, a bare passing thought to recall from his knowledge a name - _is that…? it couldn't the Caucasian Eagle?_ – before he was forced into parrying with his weapon. To duck beneath a swiping wing, to dodge a jabbing beak. To defend and flee in a sliding retreat more than to attack, determination and concentration evaporating even the fear of the sheer, intimidating size of the greater eagle.

Only, Will caught himself, lurching to spin on his heel as he glanced to the sound of Kayla's surprised shout. He spun and choked, nearly slipping over in horror at her complete absence. Absence, disappearance – in many ways such a vanishing act was even more terrifying than the monsters. Will's eyes widened, darting over the road where he'd last seen his sister, and he nearly fell prey to the attacking eagles that descended upon him as the thoughts of stark, abrupt terror flooded through him. Of _"where –? Where did –? What –?"_ before he was forced to parry at the attacking monsters that fell upon him. Kayla was – Kayla was _gone_ , she'd just disappeared into thin air. And Will didn't –

"Will!" Austin cried, his voice panicked as it hadn't been throughout the entire fight. Fear for Kayla who had _disappeared_ turned cracked his voice, mirroring that which welled within Will. Will knew exactly what he was feeling. He fell to his knees in a roll to dodge an eagle as it crashed into the ground where he'd been standing moments before, raising his staff to bat the gnashing beak that chased him. In a frantic glance, he drew his gaze briefly towards Austin just as his brother swung his sword to deflect a strike of descending talons, just as –

He fell. He disappeared, but didn't _disappear_. As though a hole had opened up beneath his feet, Austin fell through the road and vanished into the blackness.

Will stared for a brief moment. He stared at the spot his brother had vanished, and that was all the chance the eagle needed to strike. Blessedly it wasn't with talons, though the bulldozing force of its ten-foot wing was nearly as bad. Will felt the force as though he'd been smacked into a wall. His breath rushed from his lungs, fingers losing their grip on his quarterstaff and he was physically thrown through the air. It was only years of practice that enabled him to catch himself through the confusion of his dizziness, of the world turning upside down, of his hyperawareness of the eagles and the bigger eagle hovering above. He struck the hard, icy road with his shoulder, curling into a sliding roll and somehow managed to scramble his knees.

Only to see the Caucasian Eagle descend.

In an exchange just as had been before though opposite, the smaller eagles scattered. They darted from the path of their superior, fled from the shadow of its path that was more of a crashing collision course than a bird's graceful landing. It came straight for Will.

He had a moment to panic. No, the moment wasn't even long enough to feel panic. Will had a split-second to think _Oh shit_ , to immediately recognise that he wouldn't have enough time to jump to his feet and dive out of the way. A moment before what felt like the force of a giant's hand grasped at the hood of his jacket, yanked him from his knees and threw him.

Will was almost growing accustomed to being thrown that night.

He skidded on the road in a tumble, collapsing into a heap and immediately snapping his attention behind him in time to catch sight of the giant eagle crash into the ground where he'd been. The ground and the very air seemed to tremble, even more so when the monster opened its mouth and loosed another deafening roar. Will felt nauseous at the battering assault to his senses, was rocked in his sprawl to the degree that he almost missed him when He appeared.

He was all black. Not simply dressed in black but blackness itself. That was the impression Will got, the sight he glimpsed as he struggled to heave himself onto all fours against protesting limbs. Only to have the ground reach up grasping fingers to hold him down.

No, not the ground. The shadows.

Will had known who it was even before the shadows locked him in their embrace. Even before he felt the once-familiar sensation of tendrils wrapping around him, cold darkness stretching and squeezing and drawing him through the solidity of the road. Will knew without a doubt, but it still took a moment for that knowledge to register. It still took the faint easing of the darkness that surrounded the figure standing between him and the Caucasian Eagle, to see the stretch of a hand that seemed to be holding a whip-like cord of shadow itself, the other a blade as dark as the night itself.

Will was drawn into the ground. He was dragged from the scene, through the shadows to surely not even the Gods knew where. And despite the danger, despite his injuries and the impossibility of his triumph, he'd never wanted to escape danger less.

" _Nico!"_ Was all he had time to scream before the shadows encapsulated him and he saw him no more.

* * *

 _Found you. Before you pick up the nerve to face me yourself, I've got you. This time, I'll be the first to act_.

That was what Nico had thought. When he first sprung the Caucasian Eagle, grim satisfaction was what he felt. He'd heard the news stories, heard the speculations by the mortals as to the nature of the 'strange bald eagle behaviour' to the north of Cayuga Lake. He'd seen the giant eagle and its slightly less giant offspring at a distance, the nocturnal vision of his father's legacy lending sharpness to his eyes as he watched them wreak havoc upon the countryside to simply revel in destruction. They'd felled a succession of mighty trees with their battering attacks, charging the timber giants until they groaned, cracked, and fell.

They weren't hurting anyone. Yet. And it was the yet that urged Nico to act. For he couldn't _let_ the Eagle, one of Hers, run loose. Not to chase other demigods and not to seek him. He wasn't a fool, and he'd seen the trail of its passage from Oregon. It couldn't be clearer to Nico that he was being hounded. Except that this time, Nico was going to turn the tables. This time, he was confident he could win.

That was before he'd started fighting it.

Every other one of Her children had feared him. To a degree, at least. They'd feared what Nico could do, had danced warily around his sword even as they snapped and slashed in an attempt crush him with a single blow. Or at least, most of them had. Nico was coming to realise now – the offspring, Her grandchildren, were the fearful ones. The rest of them, Her children, they were wary but it was more fury that flared in their eyes when they turned to face him. The Chimaera, the Nemean Lion, the Crommyonian sow, Orthrus and Ladon. Even the two gorgons that he'd confronted yet been unable to face, that he'd defeated with more ease than any of their other siblings. They'd all been angry, furious, vengeful.

And driven. By Her orders.

The Caucasian Eagle was no different. That same wariness lay in its gleaming golden eyes, a lesser form of the fear that had driven its offspring from Nico, hastening away into flight. But the Eagle had attacked. Being a creature of the air that it was made the confrontation somewhat more difficult.

Not that Nico would surrender. Not that he would await further aid, would delay the fight in the hopes that, when Hazel eventually arrived, two swords would be better than one. He didn't have the time for that. He wouldn't pass up such an opportunity. Nico used his shadows instead.

He lived and breathed his shadows. In the years since he'd been alone, apart from the world but for Hazel, Nico had spent almost as much time sinking between the shadows as he had bathing in the light. It was a closeness that he'd never thought to explore, and with each moment spent wrapped within them he grew closer still. It became easier. The shadows were _his_ domain, and he could control them as easily as Hazel drew gems from the earth, as Percy raised water from the sea or Jason grasped the winds.

As the fight begun, as the Eagle threw itself into the air, Nico sunk into the shadows. Into _his_ shadows. He flung himself from those that hovered above the Eagle a split-second later. It was as simple as that – to dive between the shadows so closely placed, so close that they were nearly joined, like the spreading roots of a tree. It took no effort at all. Nico sprung from the shadows above the Eagle, alighted onto its startled back, and drove his sword into the bronze feathering at the nape of its neck.

It barely pierced the body armour. It was the same with all of the monsters, all of Her children ordered to chase him. The Chimaera had merely been weakened, the magic usually reserved for maintaining the impregnability of its skin redirected towards self-healing. But the others? Even Nico's sword had difficulty. Any other weapon barely stood a chance.

The Eagle hissed, spitting and turning in a roll to shake him from its back off. Nico slipped with the throw, flipped through the air at a plummeting speed to the ground, and threw himself into his shadows once more before impact. He launched himself out above the Eagle for the second time, barely managing a grazing strike before he was thrown once more. Only to dive into his shadows and reappear in a recurring loop.

That was the way of it. That was always the way of it: leap, stab, throw and dive. Leap, stab, throw and dive. The Eagle hissed and spat, spun and twisted, battering its giant wings with buffeting sweeps that sounded in moans as it beat at the wind to hold itself aloft. It snapped its beak, swiped its claws mid-air and twisted to turn a hateful gaze upon Nico.

Nico ignored its hatred. He had a job to do. A grim job, a near impossible job, but he was one of only two people who could manage it. He ignored the snick of talons that drew a gouge through the skin of his jeans, snatching at him as he fell past the Eagle's claws through the air. He ignored the bruise that welled in his shoulder as a wing clipped him in the Eagle's aerial roll, the sharp pain in his head as the giant bird snapped its own backwards and nearly knocked him out with the force of its bronze-reinforced skull. He focused entirely upon stabbing, again and again at the same point on the back of the monsters neck, chipping away at the resistant plumage.

He would get there. Nico would win. He would defeat the beast and then he would have one less. They would get there, slowly but surely he and Hazel would get there.

That was until the call for aid bellowed across the night-dark forest. The wail was high-pitched and squealing, demanding support from its parent. And the Eagle, hell-bent on destroying Nico for more than just its orders – there was fierce, murderous aggression in its gaze now, something spawned from their fight as though it were irked into greater hatred – answered the call.

With a twist that slipped Nico's feet from beneath him, sending him plummeting towards the ground once more, it loosed an enraged cry. Turned in an arc far too precise for monster of its size, it sped off into the night.

Nico caught himself with his shadows, tentacle-like tendrils lowering him to the ground like gentle hands. A cry for help? From the Eagle's offspring? Nico narrowed his eyes, shaking his head of confusion and the residual dizziness and rehardened his resolve. Without a moment longer to consider, he threw himself into chilling night that he hardly felt at a flat-out sprint, his passage smoothed and hastened by the darkness he leapt across. _Someone_ was attacking the fledgling eagles. And that someone could only be a demigod.

Another demigod didn't have a chance against the Caucasian Eagle.

The Eagle was launching itself into the air when Nico arrived. When he saw the three who could only be demigods hauling their battered selves to their feet to confront the fledglings that had renewed their passion for fight with the arrival of their father. A split second was all it took for Nico to identify who they were.

He felt himself grow cold.

 _No. No, no, no, this can't be happening. Why_ them _? Of all people why did it have to be_ them _? Why_ him _?_

The torrent of raging emotion that burst through him was unlike anything Nico had felt in years. Unlike anything he'd allowed himself to feel. He shouldn't feel, he shouldn't care, not if he had to do what had to be done. He couldn't _see_ them, because then he would feel, he would care and She –

She would destroy them.

Nico acted without thinking. He crushed the coursing tide of emotion as he raised a hand, staggering forwards at a lurching run. His shadows rose in the direction he pointed and, with a tug and a downwards thrust, Nico grasped Kayla, dragging her into the shadows and threw her from danger a league up the road towards the nearest hamlet. She barely had time to loose a startled scream.

Shaking slightly, holding fast upon the emotions that battered at his cold, unfeeling mind, Nico turned his attention towards Austin. Just as he called out to Will – even Will's name was a distraction and he almost wavered – with another tug and thrust Nico threw Austin after Kayla. A brief moment of dizziness wavered his vision – he'd never had to do that twice in a row before – but he shook it off. Just in time to see the Caucasian Eagle descend upon Will.

A cry ripped itself from Nico's throat, a cry that was barely more that a feeble croak of horror. He was sprinting before he even realised he was moving, his arm outstretched and _grabbing,_ and with a reaching tentacle of shadows Nico grasped onto the back of Will's jacket and _pulled_.

He threw him further than he'd intended, but Nico didn't care. Far was good. Far was safe. It gave him more space to skid between Will and the Eagle as it swung his attention towards its thrown prey. Golden eyes locked upon Nico, intelligent but hateful, and Nico met them stare for stare.

 _Mine_. _You can't have him_.

Sword raised, his other hand still wrapped in a coil of shadow, he glared unblinkingly at the Eagle. He didn't even turn towards Will; he couldn't turn, couldn't look at him, not now. Instead, he cast his shadows behind him to wrap around him and drag him from harm's way. There was a call, a strangled shout that sounded like his name, but Nico didn't turn. He couldn't, both because he couldn't drop his stare from the eagle and because he couldn't… he couldn't…

 _I can't see Will._

Three years. Three long years, and this was how it had to happen? Nico had to stumble across him again in the jaws of death, when he had almost been too late? Again?

A deep, enduring anger welled within Nico. This monster, _all_ of the monsters that She had sent after him, they should seek _him._ Not Will. Not any of his friends. It was almost a blessing that he didn't have any family besides Hazel because otherwise they would surely be targeted. It was hard enough to eviscerate himself from those he cared about. He and Hazel had given up everything, every _one,_ for the Her malice. For Her hatred. Her fear.

Nico wouldn't lose any more.

"It's me you were told to kill, wasn't it?" He spoke aloud, a hiss of fury chilling his words. The weariness that settled upon him, that dragged at his limbs from using his shadows as he had, was easy enough to ignore. For now. "Don't turn your back on me, or I might just stab it again."

The Eagle releasing a hiss of its own, then loosed a bellowing roar that could have blown Nico from his feet if he'd been any less grounded. As it was, he almost couldn't hear the words that the creature spoke when it clicked its beak with a snap, rearing and spreading its wings to tower above him. Its gaze was fastened upon Nico, unshaking and focused. Just as it should be.

" _You pitiful worm. Your fellows have destroyed my children_."

"I'm sure they're far from guiltless," Nico snarled in reply. "You breed chaos into them as thickly as you do your own blood."

 _"Worms! Filthy, slimy, stinking creatures, they have destroyed my children!_ " The Eagle ignored his words, rearing its head back to utter a furious shriek towards the sky. " _Scurrying beetles with their beaks and flying claws, they have vanquished them!_ "

"Well, it's a good thing that it was _them_ that got to them first, not me, then, isn't it?" Nico drew a taunting smile across his face, one that Hazel had told him multiple times was terrifying. "I promise you, I wouldn't be so merciful as to banish them to Tartarus." With deliberate casualness, he turned his gaze towards the three remaining fledglings looping overhead. "But don't worry. There's still three left. I could have a shot with them, I suppose."

That was the final nudge for the Eagle. With another screech, it lurched forwards in a smashing lunge like a falling building collapsing towards him. Nico fell backwards, sinking into the cool embrace of the shadows and rolling into those that hovered about the Eagle's neck. When he reappeared again it was to stab in a thrusting strike into the weakening defence of the bronze feathers at his neck.

It should have ended like that. It should have ended just as it had been played out for their entire battle. Nico should have stabbed into the point of weakness, the point that failed to heal itself because it was _his_ sword that had caused the damage, and when he was thrown from the Eagle's back it would be to leap into his shadows and try again. And again. And again, until the monster that had set its sights upon him, that had chased him from Oregon, would shatter and burst into a spray of bronze dust.

It would have ended like that too. The Eagle didn't even manage to haul itself back into the air, providing a flat surface for Nico with its standing stance provided, even as it twisted and flapped, beak snapping over its shoulder. It shrieked and raved, cursed and spat and assaulted Nico's eardrums with its booming roars, but even that wasn't too great a foe.

It was the sudden growth of courage of the monster's children that turned the tables.

They fell upon Nico with a series of higher shrieks that still stung the ears. They screeched towards their forefather with talon's splayed, like falcons diving towards a cowering rabbit, and Nico couldn't help but throw himself from the Eagle's back to tumble to the ground in a roll. His shadows drew around him, almost in apology for not catching him, but he barely noticed them. Instead, crouching on the hard, cold ground barely a dozen feet from the twisting, disoriented Caucasian Eagle, he snatched at the knife that was strapped onto his right arm, drew his left hand backwards, and sent it flying for one of the offending fledglings.

The knife stuck fast. It couldn't have been a much better shot had Nico the time to prepare himself more adequately. The young eagle shrieked as the knife embedded itself in the throat, slicing like a warm knife through butter with the sharpness of Stygian iron. The creature seized, jerking as it hung suspended in the air for a brief moment before plummeting to crash into its father's spreading wings. Only for a second however, before it burst in a spray of copper-coloured dust. The dislodged knife clattered against the Eagle's back as it fell to the ground.

The fight seemed to freeze. Even the two remaining fledglings didn't appear to be flapping to keep themselves aloft. The Caucasian Eagle halted in its twisting, head turned nearly backwards to stare at the shimmer of dust upon its shoulders that was all that was left of its offspring. It stared for a long moment, wings still slightly raised. Then it roared.

It was anger, fury like none that Nico had heard before. It buffeted him like a tornado tore at trees, careless and destructive, and it was only his proximity to the ground, the sudden upwards reaching of his shadows, that saved Nico from being swept from his feet. He was incapacitated, unable to even lift his sword should the Eagle attack.

It didn't. It didn't even take a step towards Nico. Instead, those great wings, the bronze feathers reflecting the streetlamp that seemed so diminutive above it, rose and stretched. In a shuddering leap, are buffeting in a way that would have thrown Nico to his knees had he not already been upon them, it launched itself into the air. Then it fled.

Whether in a fit of anger that demanded it pent its rage through flight or a protective need to defend the rest of its dwindled offspring from Nico he didn't know. For whatever reason, within seconds the remaining eagles were nothing but a trio of misshapen smudges marring the star-speckled perfection of the sky.

Nico could have gone after them. Maybe. Had he been fast enough he could have leap through his shadows and alighted onto the Caucasian Eagle's back. It surely wouldn't have taken much more, maybe even one final strike to the back of the monster's neck, and it could have been defeated.

But the Eagle was moving fast, and before Nico could orient himself after the dizzying force of the earth-quaking roar, they were drawing away. Nico's darting passage through shadows, his brief sinking between portal-like shades and throwing the other demigods from the scene – it didn't work well with rapid action. He likely wouldn't have been able to manage it upon the retreating figure of the monster that had chased him across the entirety of the continental US. The weight of weariness from days of flight was paramount.

Rising to his feet, wavering just slightly, Nico hissed in frustration. He could feel a scowl twisting his features and only wished there was something, some angry monster out for his blood standing before him so he could strike it down to vent his rage.

"Fuck! _So_ close."

Now he would have to start the chase all over again. The chase that the monsters thought they initiated, that they thought they led, when in fact they were being baited like hounds with a rabbit.

Nico felt no delight at his baiting act. He never did. That night, however, it was even worse, rife with frustration. After all this time, avoiding and dodging and drawing it from its hiding place, the _fucking bird_ had _fucking fled_.

He muttered another curse as he sheathed his sword. This time only. This time it would get away. But next time? No monster would be safe before Nico's sword. He would make sure of it. She thought She could get the better of him?

 _Just wait. You'll wish you never gave the order to destroy me and mine._


	5. Chapter 5 - Finding

A/N: Massively long chapter! Yay!  
First off, I feel it necessary to give a heads up for this chapter for a number of reasons. 1) Yes, it is very long. Hope you like it :) 2) This is where I take a little bit of creative liberty and stray just a tad (or a bit more than a tad) from the facts that Rick Riordan has suggested. Sorry if that twinges a little but he hasn't expressly said it _isn't_ possible so... 3) I have a lot of feels for this chapter. It hurts. Sorry about that too.

Anyways, hope you enjoy!

* * *

 **Chapter 5: Finding**

The jarring impact of the icy road ripped Will's breath from him for the nth time that night. He barely noticed, so frantically crazed was his mind. The name that had been torn from his tongue a split second before rose once more and choked out in a breathless gasp.

"Nico!"

He coughed. He spluttered. His abused body sought to regain a semblance of composure, or at least to draw enough air that he could sit up. With a heave, Will rolled onto his side, onto all fours, then staggered to his feet. All before he'd even managed to gasp a full breath. He whipped his attention around him wide-eyed.

He was on the road. On the road but evidently far away from the battle that had been raging against the eagles. In a stumbling turn Will could make out Kayla's car parked barely a hundred feet down the road, the dim lights of Seneca Falls glowing just beyond it. Another turn found Kayla and Austin themselves, both sprawled on the floor as though they'd had their feet swept from beneath them, had been flung like discarded ragdolls. Kayla was still struggling to roll over while Austin, dazed as he already was and blood still caking his forehead, looked almost comfortable to remain where he was.

He could. If he wanted, he didn't have to move. Will didn't care, not at that moment. He didn't care what his siblings did because –

 _Nico_.

Spinning and nearly slipping on the slick roadside, Will lurched in the direction that they had headed less than an hour before. The direction that Kayla had led them with her flashlight. If he looked hard enough he could make out the trail of their footprints still impressed in the snow, but he barely spared the observation a passing thought. His attention was focused upon the distance, the far off battle that he couldn't hear but new was still raging. His mind was grasping for –

"Will."

Kayla's voice barely managed to break through the crazed mayhem of Will's thoughts. The chanting of Nico's name, the euphoria, the anger, the fear and the need that urged him towards flight. It very nearly gave him wings. He had already taken a handful of stumbling steps along the road when Kayla, finding her feet, lunged after him to grasp his arm.

"Will," she gasped again, panting. "What – what just –?"

Will couldn't see her properly. He couldn't make out her face when he swung his attention briefly towards her. He could only utter the one word. "Nico." It sounded like a desperate whimper.

Kayla released her hold. That was all Will registered. She could have been disbelieving or understanding, shocked or confused or flooded with the same elated fear and need that tore through Will's veins alongside everything else that welled within him. He didn't know. He didn't even really care. All he knew was that Kayla had let go and then he was running. Running like his life depended on it.

In that moment, he felt as though it very nearly did.

Somehow, Will's feet retained their footing on the road, not slipping once despite their tendency to do so throughout the rest of the night. His breath came in heavy pants, gasping less from exertion and more from desperation, and he tore a path through the snow-laden roadside in a flurry of crunching snow. The trees alongside him passed in a blur, and when he reached the fallen tree than had crashed across the road he leap over it in a bound and a jarring landing on cracked branches that he barely registered. He'd needed to get past it and over was simply the fastest way.

Will saw the eagles leave. He saw their passing flight, dashing overhead like bolts of bronze and copper lightning reflecting the glow of the intermittent street lights. a tide of dread rose within him. If they'd left, then Nico…

He put his head down and tore onwards, even faster.

The site of the battle was distinctive. It couldn't be missed, the damage to the road and even the surrounding trees was so pronounced. Deep gouges scarred the road like trenches, a mess of branches torn from the trees ringing the area in a vague circle like the outskirts of a nest. Will skidded to a stop beside the runnels in the earth, breathing heavily, panting and whipping his gaze around himself. For Nico, for any trace of Nico, to see him, to –

His breath caught. If the world had abruptly decided to stop, to revolve solely around that one figure crouching just on the outskirts of the streetlamp light, Will wouldn't have been surprised. _His_ world certainly did.

He was picking up what appeared to be a knife. Picking it up, and rising to standing once more, tipping his head back as though peering at the sky. He appeared to be saying something, muttering to himself, but they were too muted for Will to make out his words. Or maybe that was simply because of the blood pounding in his ears. He drank in the sight of Nico as though he were life-giving nectar.

Nico was thin, thinner than Will remembered him being and he had never been a big person. It only seemed to accentuate his height further. Dressed all in black, a hoodie jacket that looked familiar but perhaps only in style, jeans and heavy combat boots. He was clad far too thinly for the winter weather, even accounting for his fingerless gloves, even with the long, trailing length of scarf that was the only colour other than black that he wore. Grey, it looked, but may have been washed into monochrome by the darkness. As Will watched, he tugged the scarf around his neck up to cover his mouth, shaking his head and visibly scowling up at the sky.

He looked different. His face looked different. Paler in a way that was possibly accentuated further by the night but definitely paler then it had been even before they'd become friends all those years ago. Visible smudges darkened the skin beneath his eyes, and even with the cover of the scarf his face looked thinner. Too thin, cheekbones standing out sharply. He looked tired, drawn, and frustrated, and to Will's eyes he looked to be an older, wearier image of the boy who Will had first taken to, the withdrawn, hardened and aversive boy who hardly seemed capable of even smiling. And yet for all of that, for the scowl that he wore on his face, even more aggressive than Will had once been so used to seeing, he was the same. He was _Will's_ Nico.

Will's heart was pounding loud and almost painfully in his chest. He hardly felt the aches spotting the rest of his that struggled to make themselves known. He barely saw the staff that he'd accidentally dropped when he'd been drawn into the shadows as he stepped over it in a stuttering tread. He had eyes only for Nico, for _his_ Nico, not even blinking for fear that he would disappear into oblivion as he had done three years ago.

Three years. Three years it had been. There was no way in hell Will was letting him disappear again.

Nico noticed him as he broke into a run towards him once more. Noticed him, and his eyes blew wide in what could have been surprise but could also have been fear. Will wasn't sure, didn't have the headspace to work it out. Not when he saw the very second that Nico flung out an arm at his side, the shadows rising to collect and coil around his fingers, trickling up to sheath his arm.

 _No. NO._ Please _don't leave me again_.

Will bodily threw himself at Nico, hand grasping through the rising shadows of his wrist and locking firmly. He wouldn't release his hold upon him even if the eagles suddenly decided to return, if his very life was threatened by monsters and he had no other choice. He _couldn't_ let go.

With a jerk, Will dragged Nico a step towards him until they were almost eye for eye. Yes, there was definitely fear in Nico's eyes. Fear that he didn't seem able to conceal, desperation that was unveiled and unhidden by either his glare or the long curls of his bangs. Apparently in their years apart he'd grown less skilled of hiding his feelings behind a scowl.

Will had to gasp for a moment, drawing heaving breaths before he could speak. "Don't leave," he pleaded, his voice little more than a begging whimper. Not that he cared. He didn't care how pathetic he sounded. "You can't leave. Please… please don't leave me again."

He clutched onto Nico's wrist, wishing for the first time that night that he wasn't wearing gloves so that he could actually _feel_ him. And he didn't let go.

* * *

Nico had to leave. He had to leave _now_ , because if he didn't leave right that very second then he never would.

In the past three years, Nico had almost convinced himself that didn't feel. That he could lock his feelings and emotions away, that he had done as much so effectively that he was emotionally _un_ feeling. But staring at Will, caught within his gaze, Nico realised he'd been wrong. So, so wrong.

Fear welled within him. Fear and desperation, the bellowing demands of years of coaching, of telling himself that he had to leave Will alone rising compulsively to the fore. He struggled to jerk his hand from Will's grasp but he may as well have been straining against a vice.

Nico couldn't look into Will's eyes. He couldn't, was terrified to, and yet somehow he found his gaze drawing towards them, blinking into the face of the person he'd been running from yet longing for all these years.

Will was just the same. He had hardly changed at all. Through the darkness, with his acute, shadow-sharpened vision, Nico could make out that he was almost _exactly_ the same. His golden skin was turned slightly pale and cheeks pinkly flushed by the cold. The brushing of golden freckles across his nose and cheekbones that even in the night seemed faintly luminescent were as pale as his golden curls faintly mussed from what must have been the removal of a hat sometime throughout the night. He was still the tall, solid, dependable figure that Nico would always remember, shrouded in a thick jacket and jeans, a dark scarf and winter boots. He was almost exactly the same.

Almost. Except for the white scar reaching down from his hairline that made Nico flinch when his eyes settled upon it. Except for the distinct crease of a frown between his brows where the Will Nico had known had hardly ever frowned that he could remember. Except for his eyes, the multihued blue so familiar and yet now sparking with a foreign light, a desperate light, pleading and almost as terrified as Nico felt.

Will was scared. He was scared yet not for the eagles, for they were well and truly gone. His fear was turned entirely towards Nico, was because of Nico. It made him feel sick, but then…

 _He's not scared of_ me _. It's something else. Some other fear._

Nico tugged at his captured hand once more. His shadows roiled around his feet, inching to snap firm and draw him within their embrace. He knew he had to leave, had to leave Will even through there was a very big part of him pleading and longing to stay. Even though Will had taken up a broken sort of chanting, his voice strained and choked.

"Please, Nico, don't leave. Please don't leave me, don't leave me again. Please, don't…"

Nico cringed. He couldn't listen to those words, shouldn't listen to them, because they sounded so heartbroken and almost made Nico _want_ to stay. No, of course he wanted to stay, but they almost made him feel like he should. Which he shouldn't. Couldn't. He couldn't do that, not to Will, not when it would kill him.

"Please don't go, please. Nico, don't leave me again, I couldn't stand it, please, just don't –"

"Will."

Nico's voice was as choked as Will's and quieter still. He had to drop his gaze from Will's, eyes drawing to the fingers locked around his wrist as he attempted to pry them loose with his free hand. They didn't budge. "Will, let go. I have to go, and you're just making it –"

"No. No, you _don't_ have to go." Will's voice abruptly firmed from its warbling, demanding attention, and Nico couldn't help but raise his gaze to meet his eyes once more. That sparking desperation, faintly crazed even, seemed to make Will's eyes glow almost luminescent. The crease that marred his forehead tightened further, and his jaw visibly tightened, lips thinning. Nico recognised that expression. He recognised it even after years of never seeing it. Will wasn't going to give up.

"Will –"

"Three years, Nico. Three years you've been gone, and it has nearly killed me." Nico flinched at his words, shoulders hunching as though reprimanded and his gut clenching. Will's almost painful grasp upon his wrist only tightened further with his attempt to withdraw from him once more, as though it were grounding him in his stance. "There's no way that I'm letting you leave again."

Nico met Will's gaze, his pained, unblinking gaze, for a long moment and had to look away almost instantly. There was utter sincerity in Will's words that added weight and truth to the claim of his pain. Nico could have torn himself from his grasp if he'd really wanted to – what were knives for, after all? – but he didn't want to. Not really. He didn't want to hurt Will. More than anything, he didn't want to hurt him.

But even so… "Will, you don't understand. I can't –"

"No, I don't understand," Will interrupted him sharply. "I don't understand a bloody thing. I don't understand why you left, how you could _do_ that to me, and I don't understand anything that's going on." He paused and seemed to have to take a breath to quell a rising tide of anger. He closed his eyes briefly, and when they opened once more it was in a show of desperation, of pleading and faint despair once more rather than anger. "Please, Nico. If nothing else, just tell me."

It broke Nico. It hurt him deeply to see Will so open, so shattered. He had been away from him, from anyone at all except for Hazel, for far too long. He was ill equipped to handle such an outpouring of distress. Coming from Will of all people only made it that much harder to withstand. "Will…"

"Please."

That one word. It was all in that one word that was more of a sob than a demand or even a request. In an instant, before Nico's eyes, he watched as the last of his stubborn determination crumpled into pain, into sadness and grief that looked hard and old, weathered with experience. It was heartbreaking because it came from Will. Will, who had always been so bright and happy, who had seemed to glow in the darkness and at times quite literally did. Nico had always thought there was some deeper meaning behind his godly gift of light. If anyone should shine with the glow of the sun then it should be Will.

There was no way that he could deny him. Nico knew it was wrong of him but he couldn't help it. He'd told himself it was so for three years, had avoided Will and New York itself like the plague so that he wouldn't be tempted. He couldn't put Will in danger like that, not when he already had. His eyes flickered towards the white scar on Will's forehead, a reminder of the first time such a threat had arisen under Nico's watch. He couldn't subject Will to that. He couldn't expose him to such danger.

But Will was begging him. He was right in front of him, desperate and nearly sobbing, his eyes swimming with the beginning of pleading tears. His hand grasping onto Nico's wrist as though he had no intention of ever letting it go, and Nico wasn't sure he even wanted him to. Three years of being hunted, of hunting and fighting, of hiding and avoiding, and he was finally with Will once more. Even if it was wrong, he couldn't help but revel in the moment, in the feel of Will's fingers around his wrist, in the warmth that he swore he could feel through two layers of gloves.

A small, choked sound, almost a whimper, fell from Nico's lips. He closed his eyes; anything to avoid Will's gaze. "I have to leave."

Will gave a faint gasp, but it didn't sound resigned. His next words confirmed that. "Then I'm coming with you."

Nico cracked his eyes open painfully. "Will –"

Will was shaking his head, his spare hand reaching into his pocket to withdraw a phone that Nico registered detachedly as resembling one of Leo's make. Stabbing at it with his thumb, eyes downcast, he replied with determination even as a single tear managed to slip down his cheek. He didn't appear to notice. "You're right, Nico. I don't understand. I don't understand a thing about why you left, or why you've been gone for so long. I don't understand why Hazel left too, or what you've been doing. I don't understand any of it." He raised his gaze from his phone to meet Nico's once more, and his eyes were swimming with tears that he seemed barely able to restrain. "So tell me."

There was a crack in his voice, a split of emotion that stabbed Nico to the core. He had to look away, tearing his own gaze from Will's once more. It hurt to look at him, and for the first time in years he felt his throat tighten painfully, a rush of thick emotion well within him. _Don't cry, Gods, don't cry now…_

From the corner of his eye, Nico saw Will raised his phone to his ear. There was silence for a moment before he spoke with the loudness of one striving to be heard through a weary connection. Or over a shouting voice of rapid questions. "Kayla? Kayla, Kayla wait –" He paused, half turning to draw his gaze down the road in the direction that Nico had thrown Kayla and Austin through his shadows. His grasp upon Nico's wrist didn't loosen even slightly. "Kayla, just listen to me for a second, I –"

Nico watched Will's face as the grief and desperation dimmed slightly into exasperation, into even a touch of faint amusement as his sister evidently overrode him. His mouth opened and closed for a moment, releasing a plume of white mist in a sighing exhalation, before he apparently decided that he'd waited long enough. "Kayla, I know. That's what I was going to tell you. I'm already doing that, you don't need to –"

Another pause, and Will shook his head. "No, no I don't think so." Pause. "Alright so far." And another, in which Will turned his attention upon Nico. A returning touch of desperation resurfaced briefly once more. "Yeah. That's what I thought. Glad we're in agreement on this point at least. May I?" A moment later, another moment of silence after which an actual hint of a smile touched Will's lips, and he was shaking his head. "So glad I have your permission. Thanks, Kayla. Yeah, I know, I owe you one." And with that, he lowered his phone from his ear and slipped it back into his pocket.

A second later and Nico found himself the sole focus of Will's gaze and attention once more. It was unwavering now, resolute and determined, touched with only the barest hint of teary glassiness. There was stubbornness in his expression, and Nico fathomed that if his hand wasn't occupied in that moment in capturing Nico's wrist then his fists would be propped upon his hips in the old, familiar stance of doctoring command that he had adopted so often in the past. It almost made Nico wary.

"That's it, then. That's decided."

"What's decided?" Nico said guardedly.

"I'm coming with you. Don't even think about arguing with me, Nico. Either you bring me with you to wherever you're going, or we're going to be setting up for a long, cold night in the middle of nowhere out here. Your choice."

It wasn't really a choice at all. Nico was used to ignoring the cold – sometimes he even relished the numbness it afforded him – but he couldn't feel his fingers anymore and in the absence of exertion he could feel the beginnings of a shiver taking hold of his body. He didn't think he'd last the rest of the night out in the darkness and cold, and didn't really want to. Besides, there was Will to consider too. He didn't want Will to have to suffer through the freezing night either.

 _I shouldn't. I shouldn't cave so easily. I should shake him off, or cut his arm off if I have to. It's not like he can't stick it back on again. I should. It would be better for both of us._

That was what Nico was supposed to think. It was the thought that hung mulishly on the fringes of his mind, his conscience that had urged him to leave Will in the first place. Except that he couldn't abide it this time. He didn't really want to. He wanted nothing more than to stay with Will, to bask in his presence, to simply _be_ with him as he hadn't for years.

Before he realised what he was saying, Nico found himself shrugging, averting his gaze with a frown. "Where?"

The beginnings of a smile, a satisfied, relieved smile, touched Will's lips. "Wherever you want," he said, his voice trembling slightly. His relieved sigh suggested he almost hadn't expected Nico to agree at all, despite his apparent confidence. "Just so long as I'm with you. Only – hold on a second."

Abruptly Nico found himself being tugged in a stumble after Will as he drew him across the road towards the discarded quarterstaff. It was as though Will feared to let Nico go even for the second it would take to retrieve his weapon. He tapped its end twice in quick succession upon the road and with a _twang_ it bent and curved, bowstring snapping into place like a striking snake and the staff had morphed back into a familiar bow once more.

Will turned towards Nico and nodded. "Alright. All set. I assume we're shadow travelling?"

Nico nodded, couldn't suppress a roll of his eyes that surprised even himself for the fact that he hadn't done so in so long. "Of course."

The small smile touched Will's lips once more. "You sure you're alright to travel the both of us?"

The nostalgia of his words, the memories of Will asking him exactly that so often in the past, seized Nico's chest. It almost drew another whimper from him and he had to drop his gaze from Will's. He nodded shortly.

"Alright then," Will said, slinging his bow over his shoulder. "Whenever you're ready." He stepped closer towards Nico, taking his other wrist in his hand and holding on tight. Nico had to pause for a moment to steady himself, not for the anticipation of weariness that was sure to come this time but for the simple act of Will's closeness. _So long. It's been so long…_

With a mental grab for his shadows, Nico wrapped them in a cool, blinding blanket and drew them into darkness.

* * *

The second they were released from the squeezing, stretching sensation of darkness, Nico sagged. Physically sagged and nearly slumped backwards to the floor with such speed that Will barely had the time to grab him before he was dragged down with him into a heap.

Cursing both Nico's own stupidity in pushing himself and Will's own for not considering it before it happened - really, the simple pleasantry of asking if Nico was 'alright' was hardly adequate because of course Nico would say he was alright - Will slipped and arm around his shoulders and attempted to sling one of Nico's around his neck. Only for Nico to lurch from him an instant later throwing himself bodily half a dozen steps away from Will in a stagger before leaning heavily upon the table he collided into.

For a second, Will nearly panicked. The first thought that crossed his mind was "Don't leave, don't let him leave again" and he was already in the process of stepping after him, of reaching towards Nico when he caught himself. Because Nico wasn't fleeing. Not yet, anyway. He hardly looked capable of standing, let alone drawing upon his shadows to disappear. No, his lurching step had merely been an attempt to get away from Will, a gesture that Will had seen far too many times and mostly in jest years in the past. This time it hurt, renewing an ache of longing once more in Will's chest. There was no teasing in the motion now. There was only sheer repulsion.

 _Can he really stand not to be around me so much?_

Will didn't know. He'd thought from the note that Nico had left him that perhaps his disappearance had been due to some misguided sense of duty. That he'd considered Will endangered by his presence for some unknown reason, something greater than the threats that every demigod faced. And maybe he had been right; maybe he still was right. But maybe, just maybe... what if it had changed since? What if Nico no longer cared for him in the same way anymore? What if it wasn't a misguided sense of duty that forbade him from Will's presence but actually a relief to be away from him?

Will wasn't blind and he didn't think himself a fool. He was realistic enough to claim without arrogance that he was a good fighter, even if he tended to use his sword less in exchange for his bow and his staff. But he was also realistic enough to know that he was first and foremost a healer, and that his healing took precedence over his battle skills. Out of the two of them, Nico was a better fighter. It was as simple as that. So maybe...

Maybe he'd just gotten tired of protecting Will? Even minimally as was required, maybe he'd just gotten sick of it?

Will perished the thought. He couldn't dwell upon it for otherwise it would consume him. He would niggle at it as he always did in moments of upset, thinking and mulling and contemplating from every angle and ultimately twisting the situation into negativity. He wasn't _sure_ of Nico's reasoning. Not yet at least.

Instead, Will struggled to draw his gaze from Nico and towards the room they'd landed in. It was dark, darker than it had been on the snow-slick roadside outside of Seneca Falls, but gradually Will's eyes adjusted well enough to make out the impression of his surroundings.

It was a small room, though a pair of dark doors upon the far wall, closed and for all appearances locked, suggested it was connected to at least one other. The dark walls appeared at first windowless until Will discerned heavy drapes that could have hidden any windows if they existed. The room was sparsely furnished, simple shelves lining one wall in stacked racks, what looked to be a small kitchenette that was so clean enough that it didn't appear to have ever been used, a weary couch of some indiscernibly dark colour and the table that Nico leant upon with only a pair of chairs tucked neatly. No pictures adorned the walls, barely a handful of books slumped sadly on the shelves, and only the odd discarded jacket, a stray boot, what looked like a take-out container of half-eaten leftovers dotted the room to give it any personalisation, any hint that the room was at all lived in.

Will could make out the hunched shape of a lamp in the far corner, apparently the only light fixture in the entire room, and made his way towards it. Only for Nico's quite voice to halt him in his tracks with a low "Don't."

Will glanced over his shoulder, raising a questioning eyebrow as he met Nico's gaze that was half turned towards him. His face was pale, sickly, but otherwise blank of all expression. Will knew that lack of expression only too well. _So he's acting like that now, is he?_

After a moment of silence and stillness, Nico finally shook his head. "Sorry," he muttered, a little begrudgingly. "If it's all the same, could you leave it dark?"

Will preferred the light. He preferred to see more than the vague impressions of his surroundings, to have a full view of what was before him. To be able to make out any slight twitches of Nico's expression, the barest hint of emotion that might give away the feelings behind the blank facade he presented. But he didn't care that much. Not enough to push the subject or to drive Nico into further withdrawal.

Instead, Will bowed his head and made his slow, hesitant way back across the room. He could feel a frown resettling upon his face as he drew closer to Nico, the more he saw of his paleness and the degree he supported himself with the table. "You should sit down."

"I'm fine."

"Nico -"

"I said I'm fine, Will." Nico's tone was forbidding, a quiet slice that silenced Will's reattempts more profoundly than a shout would have. Turning so that his back was to the table, Nico propped his hands on the edge and leant backwards with deceptive casualness, tilting his head slightly as he glanced at Will sidelong. Had Will not known better, he might have even been fooled by the posturing.

With a half sigh, Will nodded. The urge to step to Nico's side, to reaffirm his hold upon him once more 'just in case' was almost too great to resist. Instead, Will walked slowly back towards him, stepped around the couch. He perched himself upon its back across from Nico and attempted the same casualness of stance. He wondered if he managed nonchalance even half as well as Nico did. Nico had always been better at that.

They stared at one another for a long moment. Will tried to hide the fact that he was drinking in the sight of Nico, even the poor glimpse he managed in the dim room barely illuminated by a vague, ambient glow. He'd slipped his scarf from his chin, revealing the thinness that wasn't entirely a product of his bone structure and making the paleness more profoundly. His hair had untucked from the edges of the wrap, falling longer than Will had ever remembered it being and cut in choppy hacks that reminded Will of how Piper used to trim hers. He wondered detachedly, almost wistfully, if Nico had taken scissors to his own hair. It was something small and inconsequential, but Will wanted to know anyway. He wanted to know everything.

After a long stretch of silence, he couldn't help himself. Will had to speak. There was so much that he wanted to say, so much that he wanted to demand an explanation for, to finally understand. Unfortunately, the simple words that fell from his lips weren't those he'd intended but what he felt. Of course they were for he'd never felt anything more profoundly in his life. Even so, he hadn't meant to voice them. "I missed you."

Nico twitched. Such a small motion, a quirk of his lips, a bat of his eyelids that could have been in distaste or sorrow, both or neither. He glanced away from Will for a moment, eyes drawn to the side as though avoiding his gaze before resettling once more. His stare was unreadable.

"Nico," Will began.

"Don't," Nico said lowly, his voice slightly harsh. "Will, don't."

Will opened his mouth once more before closing it. He wasn't sure what Nico had thought he was going to say, didn't even know himself, but he quelled the vague direction of his thoughts anyway. Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the zip-lock bag that he never went anywhere without. "You're injured, I'm sure. Don't try telling me you're not. Here." He reached into the bag, withdrawing a square of ambrosia and holding it out to Nico.

At first Nico didn't move. He just stared at the outstretched offering, as though wary that it would leap up and bite him. Then he shook his head and the blankness of his expression disappeared for a moment into something that could have maybe been almost fondness. "Of course you'd have that on you."

"What?"

"Nothing." Nico shook his head. "It's nothing. I just - no, I'm fine. I don't need any. You use it."

"You do need it," Will countered. He was almost on the point of pleading with Nico to take it. With the sixth sense of an Apollo child he could feel how battered he was, the bruising, the aches that Nico had always been one to ignore in the past. "I'm not blind, Nico, or an idiot, and I do have some rudimentary knowledge of doctoring. Besides, I've got enough for the both of us. More than enough, actually. Please, just take it."

"Will, I -"

"Please, Nico."

There was another extended pause, until finally, hesitantly, Nico reached out and plucked the square of ambrosia from his gloved palm. Will tried not to feel pained that he seemed to deliberately ensure that even his fingertips didn't brush against Will's hand. He didn't manage so well, but thought he at least hid his regret. Nico studied the morsel for a moment before slipping it into his mouth. Will followed suit as Nico blinked at him with a pointed stare.

There was another pause, another extended silence of which Will was beginning to suspect might arise in frequent occurrence in their ensuing confrontation. Not that he wanted it to. Will was simply at a loss of what to say, of which direction he should take in initiating their discussion. His mind was awhirl with questions, with requests for explanation, but those questions were overridden by the sheer volume of counteracting emotions that he could only just contain, the sore need to cross the distance between himself and Nico and simply take him in his arms. He hadn't been sure at first what the primary emotion that would assault him would be when he saw him again - anger, frustration, relief, adoration, overpowering need...

It hardly mattered, now. The simple and absolutely complex desire to simply _be_ with Nico, to touch him, to be made starkly aware of his existence and the fact that he was here, was paramount. It was a struggle to maintain his supposedly casual lean against the back of the couch, a casualness that Will was sure wasn't fooling Nico in the slightest.

And of course Nico wouldn't be the first of them both to talk. He never had in any of their confrontations. Will was sure he held his tongue intentionally, yet he couldn't even bring himself to curse him for it.

 _I may as well just dive into the deep end_ , Will considered, resigning himself and, with a deep breath he shunted his nervousness aside to speak. "Nico," he began, then paused, because how could he not when Nico blinked at him with such an expression, one devoid of emotion yet somehow still guarded? Will hated to see Nico wary. It was even worse to see him wary of Will.

 _Quick like a Band-Aid_ , he coached himself, and took another steadying breath. "Will you tell me?"

Nico was silent. Silent and staring and unmoving. Then, as though resigning himself to his fate, he seemed to slump slightly, sinking further into his lean and raising his arms to fold across his chest. It made him look even more defensive. He dropped his gaze, lowering his chin so that he stared at the floor. "What do you want to know?"

Will swallowed past the urge to start towards Nico once more, to lift his chin so that he was looking at Will because dammit, he'd disappeared for three years and he deserved to be looked at. But he didn't. It was a struggle, as everything had been in the last hour, but he managed. He schooled his voice into calmness. "All of it. Starting from the start. Just... tell me."

Nico pursed his lips for a moment as though contemplating. Then he slowly shook his head. "I'm not sure if you'll want to hear everything that I have to say say," he murmured.

"I will. I do."

"You don't know that. You don't even know what I'm going to tell you, or any of my reasons for acting the way I… have." He dropped his voice until his murmur was more of a whisper. It was as though he were speaking to himself. "You wouldn't understand."

A spark of anger erupted within Will and he couldn't contain it before his mouth was running once more. "No, I might not," he snapped. "I might not understand your viewpoint and I can respect that at least. But don't try to assume that you'll know mine either, Nico. Don't try to assume that you can just enforce your reasons and what you needed onto me." He shook his head sharply, feeling his fists clench. "It's not fair. You don't have any idea at all."

Nico glanced up at Will with dark eyes, his head still bowed. "Will -"

"You don't understand what it's been like for the past three years, Nico," Will overrode him. He couldn't halt the flow of his words and didn't want to, even if they were too true and far too revealing. They demanded to be said. "Can you even imagine just a fraction of what it's been like? To have you disappear, for me not to know where you'd gone, if you were alright, if you were - if you were _dead_."

Will's throat momentarily closed, in anger and the upwelling tide of grief and panic that asserted itself every time the thought crossed his mind, even when he had the evidence of its invalidity standing before him. He ploughed on through it, his voice harsh. "I've looked for you. I've waited for you. I've sat at home like the bloody partner of a war hero, wondering if you'll ever actually come back, if you even want to, without even knowing why you left in the first place. It's been fucking killing me, Nico, not knowing anything, and you know who I've had to ask about it? Who's been able to give me some answers to justify what happened? No one. And that's the worst part. I didn't even know the fucking reason you left. I didn't even know if you were still alive!"

He was shouting. Will hadn't realised it until he finished, panting and chest heaving as though he'd just fought another battle. The throb of his wounds was dulled, the ambrosia working its magic, but a new kind of ache had grown within him that demanded attention. An ache that swelled forth in a wave of anger and grief and vocal desperation. It pounding in his temples, brightening his vision even in the darkness of the room, and the clenching of his fists was almost painful at his sides.

Nico stood before him silently. Silent and staring. He made no response but to slowly blink, and Will was put in mind of the first time they'd fought. The first time they'd really fought. It had been short, explosive on Will's part and absolutely silent on Nico's. Then he'd turned and left, Will abandoned in the aftermath of his ringing outburst and disappearing for half of the morning.

Instantly, Will's anger vanished into panic once more. _Oh Gods. Don't leave. Don't disappear again._ Will would swear upon the River Styx that he would never even consider shouting in the future if he could only be promised that.

But Nico didn't leave. He didn't rise from where he leant against the table, narrowing his eyes at Will and striding from the door. Neither did he avert his gaze, drawing upon his shadows to disappear in a swirl of darkness. Instead, he simply stared at Will and it could have been his imagination, maybe even hope on Will's part, but he could have sworn that there was a moment of pain, of regret, even guilt that briefly tightened Nico's eyes.

Then he spoke. "You're right. Of course you're right. I don't understand what it's been like for you when I left, not in the slightest. I can't imagine what I would have felt like if you'd done the same to me." Nico took a slow, shaking breath that seemed to sag his shoulders further with his exhalation. "So you're right. I should tell you."

Will was rendered momentarily stunned, both at the lack of anticipated response and at Nico's words themselves. It was so far removed from the surly, teasing, joking and at times tight-lipped person he loved that he almost didn't recognise him. Nico seemed deflated, fractured and almost broken. It was tragic, and Will had never realised more in that moment how much he'd loved their easy banter, the fondness of their exchanges that were thinly veiled by teasing jest. Once more he had to fight the urge to step forwards and wrap Nico in a tight embrace. He would, he decided. Without a doubt he would before the night was out, even if Nico didn't want him to.

Just not yet, because then Nico began to speak. When he did, it was as though he fell into himself, losing his grip upon the present and folding into an almost dreamlike recitation of the past. Will couldn't help but find it unnerving, even as he was captivated and utterly attentive.

"You almost died, Will. When the Chimaera attacked, you almost died. It was such a close call that I wasn't even sure ambrosia would do you any good. Your mum... I don't know how long you were under for - I don't really remember it very well - but your mum... she said it was close. That she'd almost lost you.

"You say I don't understand what it's like to be waiting, not know whether you're even alive or if you've died and I didn't even know? I don't remember how long I was sitting in the waiting room for but it felt like forever. I know what _that_ feels like."

Nico fell silent for a moment, just a moment in which his face slipped from its blank mask into one of retrospective horror, somehow paling even further. Will wondered if he was actually going to be sick he looked so suddenly terrible. He fought the urge to reach out towards Nico, to apologise, to cringe and admit that he hadn't known that. That he hadn't fully considered that Nico had been waiting as he'd loitering at death's door. His mother had told him that it had been a close call, and he'd been informed more from her expression than her words how close it really had been. But she hadn't said anything about Nico waiting. She rarely spoke of Nico at all, a fact that Will largely attributed to the fact that he would waver between angry outbursts and crashing depression whenever she did.

Will couldn't imagine what it would be like to have been in Nico's shoes. He'd never even contemplated it before. What horror would it be to witness Nico broken and bleeding his life out through a wound and being unable to do anything? Worse, to know that he was injured and then to have him forcibly taken away from him by those who might, _might_ have a chance to heal him? No, Will couldn't even fathom what that would be like.

Before he could say anything, Nico continued. His voice was low, and though his expression had reasserted its blank facade once more, it wavered like a leaf suspended from a branch. "One of the worst parts of it was that it was my fault. I'd practically put you in the hospital bed."

Will jerked himself from his sickened thoughts, eyes widening. He actually did push himself from the couch that time, though managed to suppress the urge to step across the room. His hands clenched into fists once more. "No, Nico. No you – How could you say that? It wasn't your fault -"

"It was. I shouldn't have let you face the Chimaera-"

"It wasn't your decision. You didn't let me do anything. You didn't have anything to do with the fact that I got injured."

"Maybe not directly. Maybe not that time." Nico's voice was so low it was nearly inaudible. "But the next time. And the time after that. And the time after that. It would all be my fault."

Will stared at him, uncomprehending. "What? What are you talking about? The next time? What next time? I haven't -"

"Not yet, but you would have. The next time it happened, the next time we faced the monsters that would come to kill me, it would be my fault. Entirely my fault."

Will fell back to staring. It didn't make sense, what Nico was saying. "What are you talking about? Monsters coming to kill you? Monsters are always trying to kill demigods. How would it be your fault?"

"'She has willed it done. You have killed my brother, you with that sword of yours. We will come for you and just as you have destroyed that which she so loves, we shall destroy that which you hold most dear' _."_

Nico's words rung in the air between them, hollow and desolate, silencing any urge Will might have to speak. They were a quotation, that much he could discern from the almost chanting intonation, but of what he didn't know. "What is that?" He asked, his voice barely more than a whisper. "What does that mean?"

Finally, Nico raised his gaze back to Will's. His eyes were deep and dark, shadowed, but even through the gloominess of the room Will could make out the haunted fear, Nico's particular brand of panic that was not quite hysterical, not most of the time, but panicked all the same. He met Will's eyes stare for stare. "It's the words of the Chimaera. Of the child of Echidna. She said that she would come for me, as a son of Hades, as one of only two demigods who could wield a weapon with the ability to permanently vanquish a monster. And that she would destroy everything that I cared for."

The words seemed to ring in an echo in the ensuing silence. The overwhelming weight of them was unhinging. Will felt immobilised, frozen with his mind ringing in the sudden plethora of facts that fit together like puzzle pieces, slotting into the spaces that had yawned cavernously and uncomprehendingly for years. This was it? This was why...?

"That's why you left?" Will managed to murmur. It would make sense – it wasn't a good enough reason, not for Will, but it would make sense that Nico…

Nico nodded and let his eyes slip closed. "That's why I left."

* * *

He stared down at Will. He stared just as he'd been staring for the past three hours, barely blinking that entire time. Will was curled upon the couch next to him, curled as much as he could be with his long frame, the crown of his head butting against the side of Nico's leg.

The darkness and quiet of the room was soothing to Nico's battered nerves. He liked the darkness, had always liked it, but it was even more of a need than a want these days. Nico barely spent a moment outdoors when it wasn't night. Darkness was calming, soft, gentle and welcoming. Undemanding.

And it concealed. It hid that which Nico struggled to hide for himself.

 _"How do you know this? Echidna? She wants to kill you because of, what, because you've killed her children?"_

 _Nico nodded. He couldn't meet Will's gaze, but more because his mind was drawn to the monsters he'd destroyed, to those of Echidna's children who had already found him and he'd permanently vanquished into non-existence.. To the words that they had spoken to him, that had helped him piece together the puzzle._

… Mother _hates_ you…

… you have already taken two of us from her. She will never allow you to rest in peace…

…mission to destroy… you cannot be allowed to exist, not with that power… you and your brood-mate…

 _"It's the Stygian iron," he explained. Not because he wanted to; far from it, for he didn't want to tell Will any of it. He didn't want to draw him into the mess that Nico was embedded any further. But he'd said he would, and he owed an explanation to Will. Will, who stared at him with such continued desperation, such unwavering attention, as though he were scared to even blink. "It can only be forged in the Underworld by bathing it in the River Styx."_

 _"Stygian iron," Will murmured, shaking his head. "What the…?"_

 _"It's different from Celestial bronze and Imperial gold," Nico explained. "Different and in some ways… it's worse. Celestial bronze and Imperial gold can banish a monster back to Tartarus, but Stygian iron is different." His fingers drifted to the sheath of his knife on his forearm, touching the weapons hidden beneath his sleeves. Even through his clothes they felt cold. "If a monster is killed with Stygian iron, they don't get sent to Tartarus. They don't respawn. They're gone."_

 _Will stared at him, eyes slowly widening. "For good?"_

 _Nico only nodded in reply._

He was not happy with the strength of his weapons. It didn't satisfy him to know that every monster he'd ever defeated, every creature he'd sliced into dust and oblivion, had truly been destroyed. Not simply vanquished to Tartarus nor even killed. They were _destroyed_ , their very souls ripped apart and shredded.

Nico might have questioned it. He might have wondered if the monsters, the children of Echidna as he had rapidly deduced together they were, spoke the truth. He might have considered that they simply had a vendetta against Hades, that his father was the cause for their hatred, not Nico or Hazel themselves.

Except that Hades had told him otherwise. When Nico had first fled to the Underworld, Hades had told him. He'd explained to him as bluntly and simply as no other god had ever spoken to Nico before. And he had proved it, too. For the destructive strength of Stygian iron came not only from the forging in the Underworld but from bathing in the River Styx. Each successive immersion would only strengthen it further.

Nico's knives he'd bathed three times each. While his sword could slice through impregnable skin after not but a few thrusts, the throwing knives were as comparatively sharp as a carving blade was to a butter knife. It was no small wonder that the eagle Nico had launched the knife at had been vanquished with a single strike.

Stygian weapons were powerful. They held power of which not even most of the gods were aware. That power frightened Nico for the fact that he didn't know how vast it was. He hadn't even known it existed in the first place. It could destroy the souls of monsters? He held no love for monsters but to utterly destroy them? And was it just monsters? What if Nico had been forced to fight a human? What if, in the battle against the Romans all those years ago, he'd actually been forced to kill another demigod with his sword? Would that demigod's soul have been shredded, torn to pieces, never to be given the chance to gaze upon Elysium or to wander the Fields of Asphodel before being reborn once more?

What kind of a monster did it make Nico that he was able to do that to another creature? No matter how evil, could he truly do that?

Even as he sat in the darkness beside Will, even as he briefly squeezed his eyes closed in contemplation of such a heinous act as he had so many times before, he knew the answer to his question. He'd firmed stance in that regard many times before, both alongside Hazel and in the chaotic silence of his own thoughts.

Yes. Yes he would. Because the monsters, the scouts and the vanguards of Echidna's children who he'd already faced, were after him with the intent to kill. Worse than that, however, they threatened to kill those he cared for. None had truly sought Will, or Reyna or Jason, Percy or any of the rest of Nico' friends, but that didn't mean they wouldn't. It didn't mean that the second Nico demonstrated any affection, any connection for the demigods he'd all but abandoned, they wouldn't fly into vengeful frenzy and slaughter them on the spot.

Nico couldn't stand that. He would tear apart as many monsters souls as he had to if it could avoid such a tragedy. Even if it tore him apart bit by bit just to do it. And it had to be him that did it. No one else would do.

 _"Why?" Will was frowning once more, that frown that Nico was rapidly coming to loathe, to dread seeing because it was so unlike Will, so different to the Will he remembered. "Why are they after you?"_

 _"Because of the Stygian weapons," Nico explained once more. He was repeating himself but for once he didn't care. He couldn't fathom the energy to even be annoyed at doing so. "Because they can permanently vanquish monsters. If it's not permanent, then they'll just come back, again and again.""_

 _"I understand that," Will nodded, his frown deepening for reasons Nico wasn't quite sure. "Or I think I do, at least as much as I can. I don't really… no, what I meant was why does it have to be you? Why you and Hazel? Because you're children of Hades, the Lord of the Underworld where the weapons were forged? That's why she hates you?"_

 _There was anger growing in Will's voice, but thankfully it wasn't directed at Nico this time. Far be it from a rising, reactive anger of his own, or even sulking disgruntlement, Nico had felt small beneath Will's anger. It was entirely justified. Even if Nico hadn't had a choice, he couldn't blame Will for his anger. He would have been just as furious in his situation had Will been the one to leave._

 _Even if it had been necessary. Unavoidable._

 _Shaking his head, Nico dropped his chin, eyes falling to the floor to picked out the grain of the wood his night eyes saw so sharply as a distraction from Will's intense gaze. Anything to distract from his frown that was so horribly un-Will. "That's not it. It's not just because we're children of Hades – or it is, but it's because of what we can do as a result of that."_

 _"What do you mean?"_

 _"Hazel and I," Nico made an unconscious gesture towards the connecting room that led to where he'd last seen his sister before he folded his arm back across his chest. "We're the only two people other than our father – humans or gods – who can wield a Stygian iron weapon and actually permanently vanquish souls –_ monster's _souls." Nico had to force himself to clarify, to avoid the alternative confession, his heinous suspicions. Anything other than monsters souls, even guilt-ridden and filled with self-loathing that their vanquishing made him, was impossible to contemplate. He couldn't…_

 _Will was silent for a moment and Nico could almost hear his thoughts turning. "So that's why…? Echidna and her children? After the Chimaera, and the Nemean Lion?"_

 _"That's why."_

Nico squeezed his eyes shut once more, his hand reaching towards his opposite forearm to press against the knife in his compulsive clasp, only to have his motion stilted as it had been several times throughout the night already. By Will.

 _He doesn't even realise he's doing it is the stupidest part. He doesn't even realise he's stopping me from acting like an idiot all by himself_.

Exasperated as it was, Nico couldn't suppress the rising warmth that settled in his chest at the thought. Such warmth only unfurled further when he turned his attention towards Will's face, to the hand that grasped his wrist even in sleep. That hand wouldn't let go, hadn't eased even for a second.

Just like Will had said it wouldn't.

 _Striding across the room in long steps, stopping only when he stood close enough to Nico to cause him to flinch, Will affixed him with his frown in close proximity. "That's it? That's your explanation?"_

 _Nico struggled not to shift uneasily, to withdraw from Will's closeness. He had never been one inclined to touching others, and had only dampened that dislike in the past because it had been with Will. But it had been three years, with Hazel as the only person he was even within speaking distance of most of the time, and it felt strange, almost aversive, to have someone so abruptly within his personal space._

 _Raising his eyes to meet Will's, it was all he could do to adopt a scowl. It was that or shrink in pained distaste at the hard anger Will wore, the frown that he was growing to hate as it brewed with sharp, bubbling fury. "You make it sound like it's inadequate."_

 _"There's a reason for that." Hanging at his sides, Nico could see Will systematically struggling to unclench his fists before they tightened once more, unclenched and tightened. "You left because you had a quest? You had monsters to fight, a goal to achieve, so you left?"_

 _It wasn't so hard to maintain his scowl. Nico narrowed his eyes. "Yes. And I left because if I didn't then everyone I care about would have been caught in the crossfire."_

 _"Did you ever stop to think that maybe that's exactly where I – where we would want to be?"_

 _Nico's deepened his glare. "It's not where_ I _wanted you."_

 _Will made a sound in the back of his throat that was almost a growl. "That's selfish of you, Nico."_

 _"I never claimed I wasn't."_

 _"You think you can just decide for me – that you and Hazel could just decide for me and Frank, and Jason and Piper and Annabeth and Percy and Leo and – what about Kayla and Austin? They're your friends too, aren't they?"_

 _"Which is exactly why I'm leaving. Them. Alone," Nico ground out. "It's why I'm leaving_ you _alone."_

 _Will's hand darted forwards. It was so fast, like a striking snake, that Nico barely had time to withdraw in an attempt to avoid the grab. Will's fingers clamped around Nico's wrist so tightly it was almost painful and he leaned forwards so that their faces were barely a handbreadth apart. That foreign spark in his eyes, the brightness that Nico had first seen in the forest, that was different to what he'd ever seen in Will before, seemed to glow in the darkness. To Nico's eyes it was inescapable._

 _"That's something you alone shouldn't get to decide," Will said quietly. Quietly, but with such intensity that it almost hurt Nico's ears to hear. "Don't I get a say in the matter?"_

 _"In this case?" Nico shook his head. "No. You don't. Because it's my problem, not yours."_

 _Will stared at him for a long moment. A long, long moment, his hand gradually squeezing even tighter until it really was painful. Nico wondered if he even remembered he was holding him. He seemed to struggle to speak, and when he did the words were uttered in clipped bites. "When will you understand, you idiot? Your problems are my problems to."_

 _"No, they're –"_

 _"Yes they are," Will overrode him. "Even hiding yourself, staying away from me for three years, even then you've always been my problem._ Such _a fucking problem." Will shook his head sharply, glancing sidelong so Nico could see the muscle in his jaw bulging as he clenched his teeth. Nico clamped his lips together, watching him warily. He wondered if Will clenched his jaw so tightly to avoid shouting again._

 _When he turned back to Nico, however, his eyes had reacquired their glassiness. In many ways, that was even worse than if he'd shouted. His hand eased on Nico's wrist, but somehow seemed to settle even more firmly. And then his hand raised slowly, tentatively, and wrapped long fingers around the back of Nico's head as though to hold him still. Nico just managed to suppress a flinch at the brush of gloved hands lacing into his hair._

 _"You never did quite understand that, did you?" Will murmured, his eyes briefly closing. His anger had abruptly faded to nothing but a shadow, replaced by a wistful mournfulness that Nico couldn't quite understand. He was much too close, and yet in spite of himself Nico couldn't quite seem to find objection to that fact. "You never understood that, for me at least, it's worse, so much worse, just being away from you."_

 _Nico opened his mouth to reply but found himself at a loss for what to say. What could he say to that? Will had always seemed distressed when he fled, when he had to take a moment to lock himself in privacy and simply_ think _about everything before it overwhelmed him. Will had often intruded on that time, had said it wasn't good for him to be alone, and gradually Nico had grown to accommodate his presence. Maybe, just maybe, it had even become beneficial._

 _But that was then, and in circumstances far less dire than those Nico found himself in. Words spilled from Nico's mouth before he could prevent them from falling. "I don't want you to die."_

 _Will's hands, both of them, tightened just slightly. That sparkling glassiness in his eyes as he blinked them open softened yet thickened, and for a moment Nico thought he would really start crying. Then he blinked long, slow, and met Nico's gaze steadily. "Can't you understand that I want exactly the same thing?" He murmured. His voice was slightly hoarse, low and insistent. "I don't want you to die either Nico. It would… it would kill me, I swear, it would. And if I wasn't with you and something happened…"_

 _"But the monsters," Nico choked out. "Echidna and her children. I have to get rid of them otherwise –"_

 _"You don't have to do it alone, though," Will murmured, voice faded to barely a whisper. "You and Hazel don't have to fight this alone. I've always been here for you, Nico. I've always just wanted to help. You just haven't realised."_

 _Nico shook his head. Didn't Will understand? Couldn't he see that Echidna, that her hatred, was for Nico not Will? That becoming involved would only drag Will down with him should he fail? The memory of Will, his head cracked open and bleeding his life onto the forest floor, sprang before Nico's eyes once more and he cringed. Not even squeezing his eyes closed, not even raising his free hand to press his fingers to them, could erase the image. For so long he'd been trying to avoid that, fleeing from the possibility of it happening again, but Will… Will had always been the sort to push himself into Nico's business whether he liked it or not. "Will…"_

 _Before he knew what was happening, Nico found himself suddenly pulled forwards and smothered by long arms and clutching hands. Will dragged him towards himself, the hand on the back of Nico's head drawing him closer and pressing them together in an awkward yet warm embrace. Nico froze, immobile, a faint upwelling of claustrophobia because_ it _felt_ – so strange, so strange and foreign and aversive and _– and yet it was right._

 _It had been far too long since Nico had been so close to anyone. Far too long since he'd been close to Will. Though he didn't move to return the embrace – he didn't think he could, not now – he never wanted to let that feeling go._

 _Thankfully, Will didn't seem inclined to do so either. His voice was muffled in Nico's hair when he spoke, his breath warm against his ear. "I know you're scared. I know why you ran away, that you're just trying to protect me. But I want to protect you too. Just the though of you facing near-invincible monsters by yourself…" He choked himself off for a moment and Nico felt him swallow convulsively. His cheek was pressed against Will's shoulder, and though tension still rippled through him, Nico wouldn't have moved for the world. Not even to escape Will's words._

 _He continued in a voice just as muffled yet even quieter. "Don't leave. Let me help you. Even if you don't want my help, please, Nico, I need… I need to just be with you. More than anything else, I need…" He trailed off into another choke that was almost a sob._

 _"Will, I – I can't…" Nico mumbled into his shoulder. He knew he should draw away, that he should pull up his hard façade, that he should resist and do what was right, what was best for Will, but… but he simply couldn't. It wasn't right for him to cave, to crumple so easily, but_ Gods _did he want to. He didn't think he'd ever wanted something so much in his life. Even knowing it was wrong, and dangerous, and all kinds of stupid…_

 _"Please don't leave me again, Nico," Will said. He'd somehow regained a semblance of strength to his voice, a firmness. "I know you're doing it to protect me but please. Don't leave. I don't know if I could stand it if you disappeared again." And he held onto Nico even more firmly, even tighter._

 _Then, in a voice so quiet it was almost inaudible yet so full of heart that it couldn't possibly be overlooked, he'd whispered, "I love you."_

That had been hours ago and the words were still ringing in Nico's ears. Hours after which Will had finally released Nico, their mutual exhaustion finally catching up to them, and they'd fallen with barely another word onto the couch. Will, always one easily capable of sleep in the absence of the sun, had been unconscious in bare seconds, wedged awkwardly with his long legs half-hanging over the arm and the faintest of snores sounding with every breath.

Familiar snores. Just like his face, eased of the traces of that frown in sleep, was so achingly familiar. Like the awkward curl he'd fallen into on the couch that was so reminiscent of every time Nico and Will had forsaken the bother of withdrawing to their beds to simply sleep in the living room instead. In Hades' cabin, in the Apollo cabin, in their shared apartment in Cambridge.

It was so familiar, so nostalgic, that Nico physically ached.

And throughout it all, Will maintained his hold on Nico's wrist. He maintained it and even unconsciously tightened it in the moments when Nico shifted as if to draw away from him. As though even his sleeping mind was resistant to the thought of Nico leaving him.

It made Nico want to cry, and Nico didn't cry. He couldn't count on one hand how many times he'd done so in the past ten years. On three fingers, in fact.

It was wrong. It was wrong that Nico let himself be held. It was wrong that he didn't use the opportunity of Will's exhaustion to shadow travel him to safety and away from Nico, as he should do, because Nico was dangerous. Not just at the moment, but as a son of Hades, with his sword and with his link to death… It wasn't safe for Will to be around him. Will, bright, sunny Will who, even dimmed as he had been that night, was still the light to Nico's shadow.

He knew he should send him away, that it would be for the best, and yet Nico couldn't. At least not now, he couldn't. He didn't _want_ to. For once, that want was even stronger than his need to protect Will, to ensure his wellbeing and spare him from the sights of Echidna and her children. Right now he needed Will. Just Will. He needed him desperately.

Selfish? Will had said he was selfish, and yes, he was, only not in the way that Will had suggested. He was so much worse than that. What kind of a person would endanger the life of the person they loved the most in the world simply because they missed them? Simply so that they could be around them and simply _be_ in their presence?

Nico was a terrible person. And yet, for all of that, for the knowledge he harboured, the understanding of the long road that was still ahead of him, he couldn't bend. Not in that moment anyway. He couldn't bring himself to cave beneath the force of his self-reprimands, to follow his logical and protective mind and spare Will from danger.

Just for the moment, he couldn't do anything but sit beside him, captive to the long, cold fingers that Will had foolishly shed of gloves, and stare. He stared at his old boyfriend who he'd left behind to spare from the dangers he would face. He could only stare and wish that, in some far off future, he wouldn't have to look upon him with despair and sadness, with guilt and exhaustion.

Sinking back into the couch, Nico tugged his thick scarf up around his mouth and chin. He always wore the scarf, sometimes even in the warmer seasons. He had ever since he'd first seen it, ever since he'd walked by the clothes rack standing outside of the little second-hand shop and caught a glimpse of the blue-greyness that Will had always said was his absolute favourite colour. He burrowed himself into his hunch, letting his eyes fall closed. He knew he wouldn't sleep. Nico rarely slept these days, but it was an escape into the contemplation of possibility.

Someday. Maybe someday. But not now. Nico couldn't let himself be so selfish as to actually abide by Will's request, no matter how much he longed for it. He couldn't.

Could he? Nico wasn't entirely certain, only knew that in that moment, as Will's hand eased slightly from his wrist, he couldn't bring himself to leave. That, and…

 _"I love you."_

Why did Will have to say that? They'd never said it to one another before, not really. Not in complete seriousness. Not like _that_. Why did Will have to say it now? It only made it both so much harder and so much more necessary for Nico to let him go.

* * *

A/N: Please leave a review to let me know what you thought. I appreciate every single one of them and to the lovely people who have already done so I thank you so, so much for your words. They're so uplifting. It's things like that which urge amateur writers to write!


	6. Chapter 6 - Leashing

**Chapter 6: Leashing**

When Will woke, it was to morning but a room that was hardly lighter for it. Faintly, just slightly, the brightness of the rising winter sun crept around the corner of the heavy black drapes that covered a trio of what must have been windows. Not enough to really illuminate, nor to drive off the chill of the room, but better than nothing.

He didn't know what had woken him exactly, but it hadn't been an entirely natural awakening. Blinking his eyes open, Will didn't even lift his head as his gaze drew the room before him, his view tipped at an angle from where he lay. It was only vaguely familiar, and only vaguely more discernible than it had been the night before. The dark walls that now appeared only grey rather than black, the dark faux-timber floors, a television that he hadn't even noticed pressed up against the wall opposite the couch on which he lay. He knew, hazily at first then with growing clarity, where he was.

Nico's room. Or his house. Or his flat, or whatever it was. Where Nico stayed. Will's fingers curled responsively in his clasp, gripping on -

He sat bolt upright. The absence of a gloved wrist from his grasp set his heart to racing. His eyes, abruptly sharpened, settled upon the couch cushions beside him, the _empty_ couch cushions, where the faint impression of Nico's seat was still in evidence. It became abruptly clear what had urged Will from his sleep and panic snapped within him.

He... he couldn't have left. Nico wouldn't have just left him, surely. Not again, please not again. And if he was going to run away - again - he wouldn't have left Will in the middle of his house, or flat, or whatever. He wouldn't, would he? Unless it wasn't Nico's house at all, and he'd truly had simply taken flight once more, just as he had before, leaving Will alone and abandoning him again and -

Will's breath hitched, coming heavily as he scrambled off the couch and to his feet. His eyes raked around the room, noting little but Nico's distinct absence. He spun a full circle, just to make sure, the fear climbing in his throat. He almost called out, as much in anger as panic because _how could Nico have just left him again?!_ when he noticed the door at the opposite side of the room. One of the dark doors, the one on the right. It was just slightly open, with the faintest of lights, only noticeable in contrast to the darkness of the room Will stood in, trickling through the crack.

Will wasn't sure if it was Nico in there. He didn't know for sure of anything; it could have been a platoon of monsters beyond that door for all he knew, even if he didn't think Nico would be quite inclined to abandon him in the face of such danger. He didn't think so, anyway, but then... maybe Nico was angry with him? Maybe he really had been resistant to Will's presence, hadn't been even marginally as taken by simply seeing Will as Will had been of him. He hadn't seemed angry, but then Will had hardly been in the frame of mind to notice the subtleties of such anger had it arisen. He'd been too caught up with just staring at Nico, at holding him when he'd been unable to stop himself from doing so any longer, with thinking about the facts that Nico had relayed to him...

Starting across the room, Will slowed his almost running stumble only when he approached the door. He slowed, slipping closer, and straining his ears for the barest sounds. And after a moment, he heard a voice, barely louder than a murmur.

"I'm sorry. It was because of my stupidity that it happened; I just lost myself when I found him. You're not injured though, are you?"

The voice wasn't Nico's. For a moment, Will couldn't place it for its lowness, the grimness that he'd never heard the likes of in her tone before. But then... Hazel. It was Hazel. Will crept closer to the door and, leaning forwards just enough to peer through the open crack, he stepped into the trickle of light.

The room beyond was brightly lit enough for Will to make out the details in stark relief. A bedroom. Or an armoury, Will wasn't sure. It was a morbid mish-mash of the two. He could just make out the edge of one bed, a plain pallet with a thin pillow, pressed along one wall of the room. Around it, hanging on walls and lying on shelves, was what appeared to be the equipment of a small army; bows and arrows, several half-empty quivers with black arrows, a javelin and an arrangement of knives. What looked to be armour that hadn't been worn for the faint layer of dust settled upon it was strung alongside a coat of some strange, leathery material hanging from a series of hooks beside the bed.

And maps. Widespread maps with pins and twine connecting those pins, with markings in black and red, scribbled scrawl that even from a distance Will recognised as being at least half in Nico's spidery hand. Posters were pagged alongside written slips of paper in what looked like a veritable crime scene investigation painting the walls. Will didn't need to see the grainy picture of a hydra, or the distant snapshot of a trio of women with dreadlocks that could have been snakes if viewed from a particular angle, to know what they were. He didn't need to be told what it meant that the three women posed in their large, colour print had a slicing red cross drawn through them either.

His assessing scan lasted only a second, though. A moment he peered into the room Will's gaze was interrupted by Hazel's pacing figure. He blinked. She wasn't the a Hazel he didn't recall, appeared as different as Nico looked to how he had been. She seemed to have thinned, becoming stretched and drawn, and it was only made more pronounced by her skinny jeans and long-sleeved turtle-neck. There was a pair of lines painting her brow, deepened by her frown, that hadn't been there before and made Will sad to see. Her golden eyes were hooded, sharp and narrowed in a way that he had never seen from her. It was almost aggressive, even if her voice hadn't sounded as such. She looked ready to spring into action, despite the evident weariness in her slumping shoulders. The tug of her fingers on the end of her braided ponytail was a twitch in agitation.

Hazel strode as though she couldn't sit still - which, given that she was a demigod and demigods were reputedly nagged by an incessant itch to move, might have very well been the case. She strode into Will's line of sight, turned on her heel and absented herself again, only to appear once more. Turning, she paused, her frown deepening slightly as she spoke. It was evidently in response to some reply that Will hadn't heard.

"Thank the Gods. I really am sorry." Her frown was hard but just faintly apologetic.

"It's fine, Hazel. You know I never expect you there."

That voice was Nico's. Definitely Nico's, the quiet, slightly monotonous tone that Will would have been able to pick out from a crowd. Even though Will couldn't see him he felt himself ease. Not gone. He wasn't gone. His relief was so profound that Will nearly slumped against the doorframe. He didn't feel the slightest hint of shame for his eavesdropping, and even if he had it would have been blown away by that relief.

"Don't say things like that," Hazel scolded. Her eyes narrowed slightly and her thin arms folded across her chest in a gesture so reminiscent of Nico that it almost erased the other stark differences between them. "I know you don't but you should. What happened to us working together in this?"

"Flexibility, that's what. And necessity," Nico replied just as quietly as before. "And the fact that you took another lead. I can hardly blame you for following it. And you've no reason to be apologetic; I'm fine. Nothing wrong."

"Luckily enough."

"There wasn't exactly luck involved."

"Your modesty does you credit." The faintest hint of a smile touched Hazel's lips.

"It's not arrogance. It's fact. I'm not exactly happy about the fact that I brutalise monsters."

The smile faded from Hazel's lips to be replaced by a dark sadness. It looked so wrong on her face. Will had always known Hazel as being bright, bubbly and happy. True, she had a past as wreathed in mystery, strangeness and hardship as Nico, but he had so rarely witnessed the retrospective sadness induced by that past that it was almost as though it didn't exist at all. Just like how Nico had changed, the faint aura of melancholy that was nothing like the largely assumed and surliness and exasperation that had been Nico's character for as long as Will had known him, Hazel was different. Will didn't like it. He didn't like it at all.

Stepping across the room, Hazel disappeared from view, vanished even when Will leaned slightly further towards the crack in the door in an attempt to peer after her. Her voice was quieter too when she spoke. "I know. I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I feel the same way, you know."

"I know you do."

Silence fell and Will could almost feel the ballooning sorrow, the resignation of the son and daughter of Hades. He didn't really understand what they were saying, what they meant. It sounded almost like regret, tinged with self-reprimand for what Nico had called 'brutalising monsters'. Will didn't understand that. Not really. He recalled what Nico had said about the monsters the night before, about the children of Echidna and how when he swung his sword, when he was the one who used it, the souls of the monsters would be permanently vanquished. Will remembered the expression on Nico's face when he had said it, too; closed, shuttered and concealing. It didn't take much of a leap to discern what was beneath that blankness.

Nico wasn't a cruel person. He used to pretend he was sometimes but he wasn't. He didn't revel in the act of killing monsters, even if, as with all demigods, there was a certain satisfaction attained only in the physical release of fighting. Will was the same - he didn't like killing monsters exactly, but sometimes the legacy in his blood was only sated by acting in response to the compulsive need that drove him. Will was a healer at heart. He liked to help people and hated to see them pained or injured, physically or emotionally. He didn't want to kill the monsters, but was eased by the fact that he was doing so for a greater good. That in vanquishing them back to Tartarus they wouldn't hurt anyone else, at least for a little while. That and the fact that such was only what it was: vanquishing it.

Perhaps that was it, Will thought. No, not perhaps. He was almost certain that was it. Nico, the often moody, sword-wielding warrior Nico, was burdened with the weight of actually killing creatures. Even if they were out to do the same to him, even if there would never be a truce even if Nico attempted to pursue as much, it would weigh heavily. Will closed his eyes for a moment. The words of the previous night, the understanding he'd just begun to grasp... it was still slowly sinking in. Everything that he'd missed, that he hadn't known, that had driven Nico's actions, foolish as they were. Will was only slowly beginning to realise them. He wondered how long it would take until he could truly understand them, until he could be an ear that Nico could confide in, confident that he knew. He wondered if he would ever be a confident. The thought saddened Will.

Nico's words drew him back to their discussion, breaking through the silence in the room. "That's enough of that. It's over now."

"Not entirely," Hazel murmured. "There's a certain something you seem to have acquired in your travels that may be cause of concern."

Her voice was touched just faintly with amusement, so faint that Will almost missed it. He had a second to consider that it was probably he that she was talking about before Nico continued. "Not a concern. I'll... work something out."

"Do you want to?"

"It's not so much a question of want, but more that I have to."

"True." There was definite understanding in Hazel's tone. "Too true."

Will wanted to step through the door, then. He wanted to stride inside, to grasp Nico by the shoulders and shake him until he instilled some sense into him. The situation? What, of Will's presence? That he'd 'work something out'? Will didn't want to be worked out. He wanted nothing more than to simply be with Nico. Was that so much to ask? Too much to consider? Why didn't Will get a say in the matter?

But Nico was speaking again and his attention was distraction. "But tell me, what happened on your end?"

Hazel sighed. "Where should I start?"

"Right in the middle, maybe? Skip all of the useless stuff."

"Hm," Hazel hummed. Then she sighed once more. "Alright. Right in the middle. I did find him. Of course."

"You did?" Nico's voice wasn't disappointed or even surprised but merely questioning. "But?"

"I know where he is, but I didn't get close enough to actually see him."

"Is he rabid?" Nico asked. "Do you think he'd attack us?"

"I don't know," Hazel replied. "Last time I came across him he seemed somewhat restrained, even with the compulsion to attack me. I don't think he's the same as the others exactly. He doesn't seem hell-bent on revenge."

Will frowned, sifting through his thoughts in an attempt to discern who they were talking about. Rabid? A wolf? Was it another of Echidna's children? He was fairly certain from his knowledge of history that Echidna didn't have a wolf child. A dog, then?

"You think there might be a chance we could sway him? That we could send him back to the Underworld?"

"Maybe. With my magic and your shadows, maybe, and the word of a child of Hades. Besides, Cerberus was always less darkly aligned than the rest of Echidna's spawn. He might be less influenced by his mum's compulsive order."

Cerberus. They were talking about Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guarded the gates of the Underworld. Or no longer guarded them as the case seemed to be if he was running rampant with the compulsive urge to hunt Nico and Hazel down. Will felt a tightening in his gut at the thought of any monster hunting Nico, of hunting either of them. This was what they'd been fighting against. This was what Nico had been protecting Will from.

It made him feel physically sick to even contemplate.

Nico's next words drove away any feelings of illness, however, to be replaced by sharp attention. "Where was he, then? Would you be able to direct me if we went jumped through the shadows?"

"I can try and shadow us. Just this once maybe it would be easier if I just did it."

"It's fine, Hazel. It would be better if you weren't exhausted when we actually had to face him. You've always been better with animals than I have."

Hazel hummed, accepting the compliment and Nico's suggestion in one. "It would be better if you weren't exhausted, too."

"I'll manage."

"You always do. When did you want to leave?"

"As soon as possible would be a good idea. That way at least he wouldn't relocate."

"You want to just try now?"

Will was bursting through the door before he even had a chance to consider what he was doing. The heavy, dark timber smacked back into the wall, snapping Nico's and Hazel's attention towards him, but he barely noticed. Anger was mixed with the worry that welled within him at their words, so much that he easily overlooked the faint reproval radiating from both of the children of Hades. "You're going now?"

Nico and Hazel were silent for a moment, exchanging a sidelong glance that entirely ostracised Will and reared his anger only further. Then Hazel turned back to him, eyebrows rising slightly. "Will. It's been a long time."

"It has. Funny that."

"How are you?"

"At the moment? Angry that two of the people I care most about in the world are thinking of charging off onto a dangerous quest. Again." He glared at the both of them, hands falling unconsciously towards his hips. He didn't care if he looked like a scolding parent more than a worried friend – or boyfriend, he still hoped, but didn't want to consider that for the moment. "You're just going to charge in without any sort of plan?"

"We have a plan," Nico muttered, and Will just caught the tail end of a subdued eye roll.

"Really? And what is that? Dive into the fight with swords swinging and hope for the best?"

"It's worked for us so far," Nico replied, his tone deceptively mild. He glanced towards Hazel. "Fairly well, I should think."

Hazel nodded, turning her golden gaze upon Will. When she replied it was in a tone identical to Nico's. "So far, yes. Although, in this case at least we'll be entering with swords lowered. I'd rather remedy Cerberus' swayed loyalty rather than kill him."

"That would be the ideal," Nico murmured.

"Yes, ideal."

"He was always civil enough."

"Hm, I always liked him."

Will glanced between the two of them as though he were watching a tennis rally, back and forth, back and forth. They spoke in perfect timing with one another, the sort of familiarity acquired from near-constant companionship. Will recognised it because it was so similar to that he and Nico had shared years before. It aroused within him sorrow, frustration, and unexpectedly an unwarranted jealousy towards Hazel. He had to fight to bat aside the unworthy thought.

Taking a deep breath, Will raised his eyes to the ceiling for a moment to ground himself before replying. "And how, exactly, do you plan on doing that?"

"Obviously we'll talk to him," Nico said.

"Talk to him? To a giant, three headed dog who's been ordered to kill you both?" Even saying the words aloud made Will wince internally.

"They tend to talk when we encounter them," Hazel explained. "I'm not sure why they suddenly can now, when monsters like Cerberus never could before. We think it might have something to do with the command from their mother."

"It could imbue them with further intelligence," Nico added.

"Which makes the possibility of having to encounter the sphinx terrifying. But we'll manage."

"Of course. We have to."

Will flickered his eyes between them both once more. He felt as though he was gaining more and more of an understanding of just where Nico – and Hazel – stood in their situation the longer he observed them. They were both resigned to their fate, to the fact that they would have to confront and potentially kill the monsters that hounded them like starving mutts chasing a rabbit. But alongside that was determination. There was resolution, sheer, narrow-minded intent that spoke to Will, that told him they were committed to their cause whether they liked it or not. That they would throw their entirety into that cause because they didn't have any other choice.

That realisation dampened Will's anger slightly. Enough for him to gaze upon Nico and Hazel with calmer eyes and contemplate what they'd already resolved to do. Slowly he nodded. "Alright, then. What do we do?"

Nico's eyes narrowed as her turned towards Will in that way that Will had always found disconcerting – he was never entirely sure if it was founded from concern or aversion. "You're not doing anything."

"You don't have a choice in the matter," Will said shortly.

"I do. You're not coming, and if I don't bring you then there's no way that you'd –"

Nico cut himself off with a backwards step as Will strode across the short distance between them. Before he could do more than that, Will had captured his wrist, fastening his grip once more. "Nico. I'm coming. We've decided."

"We did _not_ ," Nico hissed lowly.

"Fine, then. I've decided."

"I don't give a fuck what you think or what you've chosen, Will. It's bad enough that I'm even around you, let alone –"

"You need someone to watch your back."

"You wouldn't really be able to help, Will," Hazel said from behind him. "No one can really even injure any of the children of Echidna with any kind of permanency, not without Stygian iron weapons, and we need permanency. We have to vanquish them forever, Will."

Will nodded, even if he couldn't bring himself to draw his gaze from Nico to spare Hazel a glance. "Then give me a Stygian weapon."

"I told you," Nico said, his voice still a hiss. "No one can properly use one who isn't Hades or a descendant of –"

"Then I'll just shoot arrows," Will overrode Nico nonchalantly, ignoring the scowl that surfaced upon his face. He actually welcomed it; it was almost the 'Nico' scowl. Not quite, dampened in intensity just as little as it was, but almost. He half-turned towards the weapons on the wall beside the bed. One of two beds, he noticed absently. Nico and Hazel must sleep in the same room. "You'll let me borrow some, won't you?

"Yes," Nico said sharply. "If you bugger off after that."

"Not going to happen. You're not getting rid of me that easily."

"More's the problem."

"Is it really such a trial that I'm with you, that I try to help you now that I know?"

Nico was slowly shaking his head, his scowl deepening. _That_ was the Nico scowl, though more sincerely angry than Will had been used to in the past. "You don't get it at all, do you?"

"I think I understand enough."

"Obviously not, because you're jeopardising what _I'm trying to do_."

"Like what?" Will said, raising an eyebrow coolly. "Like isolating yourself from everyone you care about, everyone who cares about you, so that Echidna's children don't attack them? Us? Me? That she wouldn't have anyone but you to target and she couldn't attack anyone you care about because you don't appear to care about anyone?" Will shook his head with a snort. "What would make you think that would work?"

Nico gave a wrench of his arm in an attempt to tear his wrist from Will's grasp but Will didn't budge. He didn't loosen his grip in the slightest. The glare Nico shot him could have hardened steel. "It's worked well enough so far."

"Maybe I don't want it to work that way. Maybe I'd rather be endangered than have you abandon me."

At Nico's flinch, Will felt a flicker of guilt for his choice of words. Maybe that had been a little harsh. Maybe he shouldn't have been quite so blunt, not quite so open with his feelings and his words. But it was what he truly felt, so…

"It wouldn't work if you came," Nico finally muttered. He sounded just a little resigned. "That would defeat the whole purpose of what I've been trying to do for the last three years. I know you think that it's not the right way to go about it, Will, but dammit, making sure you're not there is the only way I can fight."

Will was silent. What could he say? In this instance at least, he couldn't dispute Nico's claim. He couldn't attempt to justify his own needs when Nico's, in this instance at least, were so much more integral to the situation. If Nico couldn't fight properly when Will was with him then he would just be endangering him by coming.

But by the same token, how could he not accompany him? If nothing else, Will could provide first aid should the need arise. He could dole out ambrosia like a human vending machine when necessary. Any help was better than none, right? Surely.

Maybe Hazel sensed Will's stubbornness digging its heels into the situation. Or maybe she was just sympathetic to his plight for whatever reason, for when she spoke it wasn't in Nico's favour as he'd anticipated it would be. "Maybe he could?"

Both Nico's and Will's attention snapped towards her immediately. Will had to admit he'd all but forgotten she stood behind him as his attention focused upon Nico. He felt Nico's incredulity rise alongside his own, though markedly more dismayed. "Hazel, what -?"

"I'm not saying he should fight with us, Nico," Hazel hastened to add. Then she continued, shooting Will a glance as he opened his mouth to object. "It's dangerous, Will, and no one but Nico and I can face the monsters. It needs to be us that defeat them."

"If you had support you could at least have someone to distract the monster while you struck the final blow."

Hazel, surprisingly, nodded. A little reluctantly, admittedly, but it was a nod all the same. "That's true."

"Hazel!" Nico snapped, his voice rising louder than Will had heard it that morning. He found he wasn't all that averse to the display of open anger. "Think about what you're saying –"

"I am," Hazel said with a sigh. "I know why we act the way we do, Nico. And I stand by our mutual agreement to exclude those we love from our battles. But this," she nodded her head towards Will as though he couldn't even hear her, as though he wasn't a part of the conversation at all. "He knows now, Nico. And he'd just do something stupid if you left him by himself."

Will almost objected. He was about to, until he realised that, criticising as Hazel's words were, they actually supported his accompanying of them. He clamped his lips closed.

"Besides," she continued, turning towards Nico head on in the face of his evident dismay. It was an expression that Will couldn't ever remember seeing on him before – he found it strangely fascinating. "He might not be able to fight the Children but there's always their offspring."

Nico visibly winced, then his scowl returned full force. "Hazel, that just makes it even worse."

"Sorry," Hazel said, and she actually looked contrite.

Will glanced between them. "The offspring? You mean like the smaller birds with the Caucasian eagle?"

Nico glared up at him for a moment before drawing a deep breath that he released in a rush that was almost a growl. "Yes. The offspring. Of the Children."

"Do all of the… the Children have offspring with them?"

"Some of them," Nico hedged, shooting Hazel a quelling glance. A glance that Hazel ignored.

"Most of them," she said, turning towards Will in what he perceived as being more of an attempt to avoid meeting Nico's murderous gaze than to actually meet Will's. "Most of those we've encountered have. Except for the gorgons and the hydra."

"Which is a fair proportion of the total number that we've actually faced," Nico said. His composure was patchily restored but he affixed Hazel with a hooded gaze that could have chilled the dead.

Hazel seemed quite capable of ignoring it. "The offspring basically try to pick us off before their parents get involved. I think they take pride in the thought of taking us down before their forefathers have to. Usually they're not so hard to pick off –"

"Not so hard?" Will interrupted. He remembered the copper-coloured eagles of the night before as being anything but easy opponents.

Hazel twisted her lips, that contrition arising once more. "Well, maybe 'not so hard' is just a comparative statement."

"Definitely," Nico said dryly. "Funny how things look so much more favourable through retrospective glasses. "

"I'm just trying to offer an alternative," Hazel said quietly.

"An alternative where none is needed. He's not coming."

"I am," Will said.

"No you're not."

Will deliberately squeezed Nico's wrist, still captured in his hand. "Fine, then. Neither are you."

Nico glared up at him. "What, you're going to hold onto me for the rest of your life?"

"That's the plan. I don't intend to let you go."

A startled silence met his words. Will hadn't meant to speak anything particularly deep or profound; he'd merely voiced what he felt. But Nico lost his glare to widening eyes, the anger slipping from his face like dripping water. From his periphery, Will saw Hazel flinch and a flash of sadness, of longing, cross twist her features.

"You," Nico began, then seemed to lose his voice. So Will continued where he'd left off. Honesty had worked in this instance to shake Nico from his firmness. Will would just use it again.

"Nico, I told you last night. I love you, and I'm not going to leave you. You can try and leave _me_ again, but I swear by the gods – by the River Styx – I'm just going to keep looking for you until I find you again."

Nico flinched this time and briefly, so quickly that Will almost missed it, he saw an expression of absolute pain, of emotional anguish that was so great it was almost physical, that he took another step towards him until there was barely a half a step between them. Only for the sight of it to be lost when Nico dropped his chin, hunched his shoulders slight and seemed to withdraw from him.

For a moment Will wondered if he'd really taken a wrong step. If he'd pushed his honesty, his feelings, upon Nico too soon and too far. They were the same as they'd always been, only realised when he was made aware of them more starkly by Nico's absence. But maybe Nico was different? Maybe he didn't feel the same? Maybe his own feelings were dampened by time, considered more of a frustrating tie to the past than an all-consuming need. Maybe…

But then Nico hesitantly rested his palm atop the hand Will still wrapped around his wrist. It was a tentative touch, as though he was scared he'd break Will's fingers if he pressed too hard. Will felt just the faintest of trembles twitching his grasp. He felt himself almost sag with relief, unfounded as it may have been even as yet.

Hazel was the one who broke the silence with a clearing of her throat that drew their attention before speaking. Will noticed her struggle with a resurgence of longing once more and felt only sympathy for her. Empathy, even. He could suspect who she thought about, who she longed for but felt she couldn't have. If only she knew Frank would cross Tartarus for her. He'd die to be by her side for even just a second in a heartbeat. Which, Will considered, was probably largely the problem.

"I have an idea," she said, and had to clear her throat once more from its slight strain. "Perhaps if we gave Will the hydra arrows, Nico?"

Nico raised his gaze at that, but Will spared him only a moment's glance before turning back to Hazel. "Hydra arrows? What's so great about -?"

"They're not just any hydra arrows," Hazel overrode him. It was strange to hear her do so; she'd always been so polite and quietly spoken in the past. Maybe her vocalness was a product of spending too much time with Nico? "These are _the_ hydra arrows."

"Meaning?"

"They're what the ones used at Camp Half-Bloods are based off but better because they're the originals," Nico said.

Will turned back towards him, eyebrows rising. "What? You seriously… the original Hydra arrows? The spoils of war?" He glanced to Hazel, then back to Nico once more. "Did you – did you actually defeat the hydra? The two of you?"

Nico shrugged as though it was nothing exceptional. Hazel nodded. "Hopefully permanently this time." There was only a touch of pain, of guilt, in her voice at the words.

Will shook his head slowly. "Incredible. Just the two of you…" Then he nodded sharply and affixed Nico with a stare. "Alright. If that would make you more comfortable, I'll just stand on the sidelines." _Unless I'm needed_ , he added to himself. If things started to go pear-shaped there was no way he wouldn't throw himself into the fray.

Nico regarded him unblinkingly for a moment, lips pursing slightly. When he slowly nodded his head, Will had to struggle to withhold a shout of triumph. It died an instant later with Nico's tone. "Fine. If that's – fine. But you'll be with Orthrus the entire time."

Will frowned the mental image of a two-headed dog rising to his thoughts. "Orthrus? Isn't that –?"

"Cerberus' brother?" Nico nodded. "Technically. But that wasn't who I was talking about."

In a twist of his wrist, Nico somehow managed to dislodge Will's fingers from his arm. He nearly gave Will a heart attack in the process at the thought of him pulling himself away. He had to actively bite back the urge to grab him once more, reprimanding himself even as he did for the nervous reflex. But Nico didn't disappear or sink into his shadows as Will had half feared. Instead he simply shucked up his sleeve to reveal a knife strapped to his forearm and, higher than that, what looked like an armband of sorts made out of –

"Is that actual bone?" Will asked, unable to quite hide his distaste.

Nico paused in the act of unlatching the bones from his arm to regard Will flatly. "Really, how long have you known me and you have the stupidity to wonder why I carry a skeleton on my arm?"

Will had to accept the insult where it was due. "True enough."

Nico handed the armband over to him with something that could have been relish. He shot a glance at Hazel who actually seemed to be attempting to withhold a smile. "If you're coming, you're sticking with this the whole time."

"Nico –"

"The whole time, Will."

Will stared at him for a moment, shrugging off his confusion as to the request and the circumstances at large before sighing and shaking his head. "You sound like my mum."

"I'll take that as a compliment," Nico said with an inclination of his own head.

"What is it? You said Orthrus? But then _not_ the two-headed dog that's Cerberus' brother?"

"Well," Hazel drawled slowly, the smile more pronounced on her face. It looked slightly strange, almost stiff, as though it were a foreign presence. "I suppose it is sort of Orthrus. Or at least a part of him."

"A part of him?" Will asked. His distaste had turned to nausea and he eyed the connected bones warily. He was a doctor, was more than familiar enough with bones but this…"Which part exactly?"

"Isn't that obvious?" Nico asked. He was so clearly enjoying himself, despite the blankness of his face, that Will almost didn't mind being made the butt of their joke. "It's the skeleton."

"The spoils of war, technically," Hazel clarified.

"Spoils of –?"

"It's our pet bull."

Will blinked, a confused and slightly concerned frown growing on his forehead. "Excuse me? Your what?"

Nico didn't reply. He only smiled. It was a terrifying sight, even if it was somewhat beautiful in its own was for the fact that it was a smile at all. But even so, Will wasn't comforted.

Not in the slightest.

* * *

Central Park in New York was thrumming with people by midmorning. It was actually a shame that the weather was so fair, for winter at least, because it was so crowded. That and it was the weekend, Will realised belatedly. He often had difficulty keeping up with what day it was.

But either way, he was at least enjoying the distinct lack of night and the brightness that allowed him to see. Apparently it wasn't an opinion Nico and Hazel shared

Their mutual paleness stood out starkly in the sun, giving them a greyish tinge. It was just as bad if not worse than Will had ever seen of Nico before and the first time he had seen Hazel quite such a sickly pallor. More than that, they looked distinctly uncomfortable, like fish out of water. He wondered how long it had been since either of them had spent any real time in the sun.

 _Well, at least they get to feel some discomfort too,_ Will rationalised. He was certainly nudged out of his comfort zone by the presence of the skeletal bull that seemed to stick to his shadow like glue.

Nico hadn't been joking when he'd said that Orthrus – the two-headed _dog_ Orthrus – was their pet bull. Will had thought him to be perhaps pulling his leg, teasing him in a different sort of way to how they'd used to exchange jests, which was largely based on exaggeration of the actual and thick with sarcasm.

But no, Nico had been quite serious. The skeleton of the bull, broad, widely arcing horns curving around Will's shoulders in a strange sort of embrace even as they walked, was testament to that. When they'd arrived by shadow travel in the conservancy car park, a call of "Orthrus, would you mind?" from Nico had flung the bone bracelet from Will's hand to the ground with animated force. A second later it was splintering, cracking and extending its ivory pieces, and within moments the skeleton of a bull standing before him.

Will stared with a mixture of uneasiness and fascination, as he did with every discovery of the mythical world that he hadn't encountered before. Edging slowly away from the bony creature, only to have it take a step after him with blank, staring eyeholes trained upon him like a watching hawk, he turned to Nico. "That's kind of creepy. Why is a two-headed dog's spoil of war the skeleton of a bull?"

Nico shrugged helpfully, but Hazel actually offered an explanation. "We figure it's probably in the spirit of his duty from before he wasn't, you know, hell bent on killing us. Before Echidna gave her order."

"His duty?" Will asked, pinching at his memory for what little he knew of the monster. "You mean guarding the – he guarded cattle, didn't he? The giant Geryon's cattle?" Understanding slowly dawned, even touched with confusion. "Still, that's a little twisted for its spoil of war to be a bull when he was a dog."

"A monster," Hazel corrected. "What ever really makes sense about monsters?"

Will had to concede to her words at that. "True."

Which was how he got a bony shadow of a bull's skeleton following him as he in turn followed Nico and Hazel through Central Park. He couldn't help but glance uneasily over his shoulder time and time again – did the bull have to walk quite so closely on his heels? – at least until Nico glanced at him and spoke up. "He's guarding you."

"Yes, I can see that."

"If you don't want him to, I could just send you back to the flat."

Will turned from where he'd been eyeing the bull – Orthrus? Really, they still called it Orthrus? – towards Nico. "You're actually going to try and trick me into that one?"

Nico shrugged, turning away from him once more. "It was worth a shot."

So Will ignored Orthrus. Or at least he did to the best of his ability. Orthrus in turn seemed to do nothing but follow Nico's unspoken order to follow him like the hound he had once been. Will tried not to be disturbed by his silent, hulking presence as he clipped along behind him, to pay no more attention to him than the mortals around him did.

They made their way from the car park through the snow-laden grounds, dodging through idlers who for whatever reason seemed to think that the absence of actual snowfall made it a good day to be outside. Will huddled down in his coat, the hand that wasn't holding his bow to his shoulder shoved into his pocket and breathing out gusts of foggy air that plumed before him like a steam engine. And frowning, because both Nico and Hazel were dressed far less warmly than he was, nothing but thin jackets and a scarf for the both of them, and yet they didn't seem troubled by it in the slightest. Nico didn't even bother to tug his own scarf – a long, draping piece of a beautiful shade of blue, not grey as he had previously thought – to cover his face. Their eyes scanned around them as though on the lookout for an attack, even though Hazel had mentioned that she was fairly sure Cerberus had set up shop in Belvedere Castle.

They approached the little folly castle that was hardly much bigger than a house and paused at a distance. From where Will stood, looking over the heads of the wandering pedestrians and children that laughed and bounced like jacks-in-the-boxes, he could see nothing particularly remarkable about other than its miniature size to differentiate it from any other castle more typically seen in somewhere like Britain. Grey stone walls, a single, turreted tower boasting the American flag flapping lazily in the feeble breeze, arching windows and a heavy sprinkling of snow atop its roof that made it resemble nothing if not an iced gingerbread house. A very large iced gingerbread house. From what Will knew of it, it was largely used as an Observatory where once it had been a weather station of sorts, though the exhibitionist attributes were evident through the trickle of people wandering through the arching door. A typical tourist attraction or weekend stopover for family day trips. Nothing out of the ordinary.

At least that was what Will thought until he saw the giant, three-headed dog, anyway.

"There's our friend," Hazel said, pointing a little redundantly towards what appeared to be a Rottweiler the size of a bus curled in what looked like a padoga of sorts to the left of the castle. A pagoda that was effectively blocked from public access by the three-headed dog, that eerily fading between solidity to transparency as Will watched. Drawing towards it, wariness urged Will to unsling his bow from his shoulder even as Hazel's hand fell towards the hilt of her spatha and Nico slipped the knife that was strapped to his forearm into his hand. Like his sword, it was the dark, light-sucking black of Stygian iron.

"We'll try talking to him first?" Hazel suggested.

"Do you even know if he can talk?" Will asked.

Hazel shrugged one shoulder, pausing in step several dozen feet from the pagoda. "If past experience dictates anything than he should. All of the other monsters did."

 _All of the other monsters_. The words repeated themselves in Will's mind and drew an uneasy queasiness into his belly. How many other monsters had it been? All of them Echidna's children, too? That would be… they were a challenge for anyone, even a whole quest of battle-trained demigods. Even knowing, obviously, that Nico and Hazel had survived, it made Will feel ill to even contemplate them both in such danger.

"Hey."

Will turned his gaze from where he'd been staring at Cerberus at the sound of Nico's voice. He was peering at Will, blank-faced but for a touch of… exasperation? "Don't look so worried. And you shouldn't frown so much."

Will blinked. Worried? Had he really looked worried? And frowning? He hadn't even been aware that he was. "I can't really help it."

"You know, you'd be more of a hindrance than a help if you don't calm the fuck down," Nico sighed, though for all the harshness of his words his tone was almost soothing, the most comforting that it had been since Will had found him. "Tell you what, if he happens to snap either of our heads off you are given full permission to shoot as many arrows as you'd like."

Will felt his frown this time. "I would hope that I'd manage to shoot him before you lost your head."

Nico shrugged. "I suppose it depends on how good your aim still is."

"I haven't exactly neglected my practicing."

"Good to know. You're not as incompetent as I'd worried you were."

It was Will's turn to sigh this time and he raised his eyes skyward briefly before replying. That Nico was actually worried for him was nice in a sort of twisted way but his words were still biting. "You know, just because I don't spend every minute of the day in arms practice doesn't mean I can't still fight. And I do happen to have a career developing wonderfully, thank you very much." _A career that – oh shit, I'll definitely have to ring Mannis and tell him I can't make it today. Or tomorrow. Or probably any time in the near future._ The thought of missing work wasn't as worrying as it perhaps should have been.

"Right. You'll have to tell me about that sometime," Nico said, before stepping up beside his sister and setting forth towards Cerberus once more. It took a moment of Will falling into his wake to realise that his words hadn't been sarcastic, or even in jest. Another moment to realise that his worry had eased, even if just slightly.

Until they stepped up to the pagoda, that was, and Cerberus lifted his three heads from where they'd been resting upon his paws. A woman with her son, hastened their step as they left the shadow of Belvedere Castle, and Will caught the passing words of, "No, Jamie, no patting stray dogs. Especially not dangerous ones."

Will couldn't help but agree with the sentiment. While Cerberus would have just appeared to be nothing more than an average, run-of-the-mill giant three-headed Rottweiler taking a nap in the middle of Central Park, at Nico's and Hazel's approach he grew visibly agitated. Or at least two of his heads did. One, the one on the right, set to snapping and growling, rapidly spilling forth a spitting pool of saliva with each clamp of its teeth. The one on the left trained red eyes upon them all, narrowing and beginning a grumble that it took Will a moment to realise was a mutter of actual words. "…came, they came, just as we thought they would, and Mother, we will do what Mother says, we will bite them, and eat them, and crush them to little pieces and…"

Will shifted uneasily in the cradle of Orthrus' horns and couldn't help but take a small step away from the dog. He was relieved to see that Nico and Hazel did similarly.

The central head, however, didn't appear to be as close to insanity as its roommates. Raising its head, it regarded them with eyes lacking in the narrow hatred of the left head, or the crazed aggression of the right. It was like the rose between the two thorns of its fellow heads.

"Young master. Young mistress. You should not be here."

Until that moment, Will hadn't really been entirely convinced as to Nico and Hazel's mutual speculation as to the heightened intelligence of the Children. That scepticism wasn't bellied in the slightest by the evident insanity of both of the side heads and the left one's muttering, but the central head… there was a sharp wisdom in its heavy eyes, the creasing wrinkles above its eyes giving it the impression of an elderly patriarch. Unfortunately, any soothing that may have been felt from the evident composure of the central head – the head that Will realised he was already unconsciously thinking of as the 'real' Cerberus – was alleviated by the Crazy One and the Mutterer.

The giant dog appeared on the verge of rising to its feet. Almost, before with what appeared to be a physical effort he stilled his attempts and remained on his haunches, body thrumming with tension. He twitched slightly, as though flies alighted upon his shoulders to irritate his skin, but otherwise remained unmoving.

Hazel was the first to step forwards, then Nico with a warning glance over his shoulder towards Will that very clearly said _'stay put'._ Will had to bite back a retort as Hazel spoke with a nod of her head that was more of a bow of acknowledgement. "Cerberus. You know why we've come."

"I do know," the middle head said, his voice deep and heavy and just faintly thrumming with a canine growl. "You have come to kill me."

"Kill! Kill them! We have been told to kill them!" The Mutterer suddenly snarled. Its fellow Crazy Head growled savagely, spittle spraying and gnashing its teeth. Will was very glad for the distance that Nico and Hazel maintained from the dog.

The growls and yelps, the snarls and muttered curses, persisted until Cerberus, the middle head, snapped towards either side and nipped at both of its fellows. A cry of surprise more than pain erupted from them both before they momentarily eased into dribbling snarls and unintelligible mumbling once more. "I am sorry, Master, Mistress. I did not choose this."

"We know you didn't," Nico said quietly, stepping close enough to the dog that Will found himself starting forwards himself with arm outstretched. Only for Orthrus to twist his head and effectively trap him with the loop of his horn. Will scowled. _Stupid bull_.

Blessedly, Cerberus didn't lunge for Nico, even if his two sidelong heads growled with added intensity. Nico continued in his quiet tone, almost soothingly. "We don't want to kill you, Cerberus. You're our father's servant and, I should think after all these years, his friend."

"And yet kill you must," the dog rumbled. "For in this mortal world, I am bound by the compulsive urge to hunt and destroy you both –"

"Hunt! Destroy! Kill, kill, rip them apart, tear them to shreds –"

"- and that is something I _cannot_ do. I will not allow myself to kill the children of my chosen master."

Will frowned. Chosen? His chosen master? He was referring to Hades, then? Will had always thought that Cerberus had been a gift to Hades, that he was a servant bordering on a slave, but the dog's words seemed to counteract that assumption. More than that, they seemed to suggest that his orders to kill Nico and Hazel were far from his own desires. Was it even possible for Echidna, as the monster's mother, to so compel him?

Hazel's words as she fell into place beside her brother voiced Will's thoughts. "Echidna's orders, the ones she gave to kill us –"

"Kill! Kill them now, quickly, kill!"

"- they really are a compulsion placed upon you, then?"

Cerberus paused to snap at both of his other heads once more. When he spoke in reply, there seemed to be an added tension in his voice, a tension reflected in the slight trembles rippling over his pelt as though he were straining against the decision he'd made to remain seated on his haunches. "It is the way of the mother to command. When she commands, we must obey."

"That's the same for all of your siblings?"

Cerberus growled lowly. "For my _siblings,_ yes. But they act with glee upon Mother's orders. They revel in the act of chasing you down. Of hunting –"

"Hunt! Hunt them!"

"- with the desire to achieve vengeance and perceived justice for your supposed wrongs."

"But you don't think that?" Hazel asked, tilting her head in regarding him.

Cerberus bowed his head slightly. "I do not. I hold little to no compassion for my brothers and sisters. We are of a being apart from one another. I have long since affirmed my loyalties. It is the call of my mother when she briefly arose from her sleep that urged me to act."

"And it was stronger than your loyalty to our father?" Nico asked, folding his arms. Will could picture the frown on his face, even if he couldn't see it standing behind him as he was.

"Only momentarily. Enough to draw me from the Underworld. In this mortal world," Cerberus gave another visible tremble and half rose on his front paws before forcibly dropping down to the ground in a heavy thump once more. "It is harder to resist."

Nico and Hazel exchanged a frowning glance, Nico even sparing a moment to turn his gaze over his shoulder to Will before facing Cerberus once more. "We don't want to kill you, Cerberus."

"Kill! Must kill, we must –"

"But you must," Cerberus said, snapping at his left head until it hushed into unintelligible grumbles once more. "I do not even know if I would be able to further resist my mother's orders if I was returned to my homestead."

"Would it help?" Hazel asked. "If you were in the Underworld, would it help you to resist?"

Cerberus gave what Will could only perceive as being something of a shrug. "Perhaps. I feel the urge weakened just slightly being so close to the Doors as I am."

"Ah, I see. So that is why you are staying here," Hazel murmured. At her side, Nico nodded his own understanding.

Will couldn't hold his tongue any longer, confusion and worry drawing the words from his lips. "What? What does that mean?"

Three pairs of red eyes snapped towards him. Cerberus gave a grumble that Will took a moment to realise was something like a chuckle. "Orthrus. What an unexpected and pleasant surprise to see you shaped as such."

Behind him, the bull-skeleton rapped a hoof on the ground. Will was certain he would have heard the bovine snort if not for its absence of nostrils and breath. Nico glanced back towards Cerberus. "You aren't angry about this?"

"Angry?" Cerberus gave a snort that caused his two sidelong heads to snap their attention towards him warily, both growling in distaste. "No, I am hardly angry. I have told you, my chosen loyalties lie not with my blood-relations."

"That's a plus, then, I guess," Hazel muttered.

"In answer to your question, son of Apollo," Cerberus continued, and Will didn't even have the care or consideration to wonder how he knew the nature of his godly parent. Monsters just seemed to know that sort of thing. "The Doors of Orpheus lie just beyond those rocks down by the frozen pond." He tilted his head in an awkward swing over his muttering counterpart towards the region beyond Belvedere Castle. "They are closed at present, but I remain nearby for the possibility that they would open."

"The Doors of Orpheus?" Will turned a frown upon Nico. "Didn't you and Percy go through them a couple of years back?"

"A couple?" Nico glanced towards him with a raised eyebrow. "Try longer than a decade."

"You didn't tell me they were located at Central Park."

"You didn't ask."

"Oh, so I'm supposed to request such information of what most people would consider to be fairly integral to the story?"

Nico rolled his eyes towards Will, eyelids hooded. "If it's so integral, you should have just _asked_."

"The fact that a pair of Doors to the Underworld were practically within walking distance of Camp didn't seem like a noteworthy fact to point out?"

"At the time, no. You hardly seemed particularly inclined to meeting my father."

"That's hardly the point, Nico –"

"Guys?" Hazel interrupted, and Will stuttered his arguments to a halt. Silenced, he realised what had just happened and though irritation and frustration had been thickly coursing through him he couldn't help but feel a rising tide of delight his and Nico's exchange. It felt almost… normal. Almost like it had been before. Will couldn't keep the smile from his face, even when Hazel rolled her eyes in evident amusement at the sight of it.

Nico had already brushed their banter aside, as if it truly was commonplace, and turning back towards Cerberus. "Do you think you'd be able to get to the Underworld and fall beneath the magic that holds you there if you got through the doors?"

"No! No, must kill! Fight, and bite, and attack, just as mother says!" The muttering head released a shriek of objection, mirrored by the growling barks of its opposite head. Both pairs of eyes seemed to spark with fiery fury, and Cerberus' body trembled even more pronouncedly.

"Perhaps. I do not know, but perhaps. If I could get through the doors."

"What if we opened them, then? They need music, right?"

"Music?" Will repeated, his memory of the recitation of events that Nico had given him rising to the forefront of his mind. Something about Grover the satyr with a pair of reed pipes.

"Because we just so happen to have a child of Apollo along with us," Nico continued, gesturing towards Will over his shoulder. "Maybe he could be useful."

"Your compassion speaks for you," Will muttered with a roll of his eyes. Hazel spared him a glance with her odd, stiff smile once more.

Cerberus turned towards him, fighting against the twitches that shook him and the jerks of the two swinging heads at either of his shoulders. His eyes stared unblinkingly and Will could almost swear that they were faintly pleading. "I would… surely try. I could try."

"Then maybe if we open the Doors?" Hazel suggested. "If you could go down –"

"I fear that may be more difficult than I had previously anticipated," the dog said, and, as if to prove his words, lurched to his feet. Nico and Hazel took hasty steps backwards, and Will backed into Orthrus, nearly spearing himself until the bull too retreated a little. Thankfully Cerberus didn't lunge forwards; his feet were planted wide, like a horse panting in overexertion with centre head bowed. "I apologise, young master, young mistress. The strain, it is – I am finding it – growing, the longer you remain. Please away –"

"We can try and help you," Hazel persisted, her tone suddenly hardening and losing any of its tentative questioning. "If we can just open the doors –"

"Kill them! Quickly, before they get away!"

"- then maybe it would counteract the compulsion of Echidna's order enough for you to return to Hades."

Even Cerberus' central head was shaking now, and Will felt his fighting readiness tighten his muscles, even as he heard the murmurs of vaguely concerned mortals wandering past with words of "Rabid stray" and "Someone should do something about that". He couldn't blame them and, loathe as he was to use it against a monster demonstrating such intelligence and desperate loyalty, Will drew one of the long, light-weight blue-black hydra arrows from his quiver and notched it.

"I do not know," Cerberus growled. "I do not know, I can't know and it is almost too dangerous to try –"

"Almost," Nico broke in and, as with Hazel, his voice had hardened with determination. "But we can try."

"Too dangerous," Cerberus said, a paw the size of a truck's tyre edging from the shade of the pagoda. The words were nearly lost beneath the combined growling and snarling, the muttering and seething of the two other heads. "If it doesn't work –"

"Make an oath then," Nico interrupted him, his voice faintly harsh. Will spared him a glance to where he'd retreated nearly to Will's side to see that the determination had blanked his face, his eyes sharp and dark and narrowed. Though his hand was reaching for the sword at his shoulder, the other clasping his drawn knife so tightly his knuckles were white, he didn't seem any more inclined to use either of them. It was probably that more than his words, any of them so far, that told Will that he truly, _desperately_ didn't want to kill Cerberus.

 _It's even more profound than I'd thought. This monster fighting, the chasing and the vanquishing – no, the_ killing _. It's hurting them both even more than I'd realised_.

The thought registered to Will and, even though he maintained his notched arrow, he knew he wouldn't use it to kill. Even if it couldn't properly kill, he wouldn't fire it with the intent to vanquish unless he absolutely had to. The thought steeled him, hardening him almost as much as Nico and Hazel appeared to be. He focused his attention fully upon Cerberus as the dog swung its central head towards Nico at his words.

"An oath?"

"You're bound to the Underworld," Nico hastened to explain, stepping backwards alongside Hazel as Cerberus took another jerking step towards them. "You're already bound, which means that the magic will be stronger. It's probably why you feel Echidna's compulsion dampened so close to the doors."

"Which means," Hazel jumped in to continue, drawing Cerberus' reddened gaze towards her instead, "that any oath – say, upon the River Styx – would be even more binding."

Will didn't understand what they were insinuating but for the knowledge of such an oath. He felt like a confused observer, watching a performance on the edge of his seat without really participating. Cerberus, however seemed to understand immediately. Even as his body lurched forwards another step he reared his middle head with sharp decisiveness in his eyes. "Yes. Yes! I will, I will attempt to –" he broke off with a yelp as the right head turned and snapped at his throat, breaking skin and leaving a slicing red gash in the blackness of his fur.

He continued a moment later, however, growling voice taking on a sombre, booming tone. "I swear it, upon my name, my masters name, and upon the River Styx, that should I step once more into the realm of Hades I shall never again step forth from that realm unless under the direction of Hades blood itself. This I swear!"

The final word was spoken with a barking shout. And then Cerberus snapped.

It had evidently been one push too far for the monster's warring loyalties. With a communal howl of its three heads, each turning upwards to the winter sky, he changed. It changed. Will was left staring in a mixture of awe and foreboding horror.

The transparent three-headed Rottweiler transformed, morphing into something other. Something that resembled more of a Doberman than a Rottweiler, a three headed Doberman the size of a bus with a mane of snakes ringing each head, with tails extending and whipping in lashes behind it. Saliva dripped from each of its jaws, red eyes glowing with an ethereal demonic glaze, shoulders bowing and heads dropping as it swung its attention towards Nico and Hazel with sharp focus. A rumbling growl that shook Will to his bones erupted from its now synchronous mouths. Slow steps, clicking with long claws that resembled the curving, extended lengths of a lion's, scraped ear-splittingly on the ground.

It jumped.

Will barely had time to reach forwards, to grab Nico even as Nico swung towards him and do the same, before Orthrus hooked a snapping lock of his horns around his waist and lurched him sideways. Will was flung, barely keeping a hand upon Nico as they tumbled across the road and through the snow in a crashing heap. The burn of ice scraping across Will's face drew what little breath was still within his lungs from him with a gasp.

He heaved himself onto his knees as soon as he stopped rolling. Somehow he'd maintained a grasp upon his bow, just as he had upon Nico's arm. The both of them clambered hastily to their feet, Nico crying out with a sharp, "Hazel!"

Will swung his gaze towards the path they'd been thrown. Cerberus crouched in the wake of its leap, back hunched and curled so that its shoulder blades pointed sharply towards the sky and heads whipping in a confusion of shakes as though ridding its ears of water. Will's eyes snapped left, right, scanning for a glimpse of Hazel, and nearly sagged when he saw her climbing swiftly to her own feet in the shadow of the pagoda where she'd evidently dived.

He didn't have time to do more than that, however. Not when Nico swung towards him, grabbed the lapels of his jacket and dragged him towards where Orthrus stood before them, head bowed so that his ivory horns jutted towards where Cerberus was steadying himself on his feet. Somehow – Will wasn't even sure how he managed it – Nico managed to manoeuvre him so that, within seconds, he was actually slung astride the bull's bony back.

"Nico, what -?"

"Want to make yourself useful, Will?" Nico swung an arm behind him, towards Belvedere Castle in the direction that Cerberus had turned before. "Go and open the Doors of Orpheus. In the cliff-face down by the pond."

Will blinked, abruptly horrified. "What, and leave you here? No way in Hades –"

"I swear, by the Gods, Will, if you don't I'll shadow travel you out of here so fast you'll leave your eyeballs behind."

The image didn't do Will any favours for the tightening in his stomach. He glanced once more at Cerberus, to where he'd locked his growling attention upon Hazel and was prowling towards her once more, before glancing back towards Nico. He was frowning up at Will with hard, almost pleading demand. He was asking Will to do something _useful._

To the cries of onlookers – the mortals had evidently noticed that something was wrong with the 'stray dog', even if they couldn't see him properly through the Mist – Will nodded. He didn't want to leave Nico, but if this would be how he could help, how he could best be of use… "Fine. Any song?"

"Any song. And hurry, dammit, so we can send this dog back to Hades."

Will nodded. "I'm on it." Then, even without his direction, Orthrus spun around and set off at a charging gallop around the castle, a rocking lope that was as disconcerting as it was difficult to maintain a seat throughout. Will clung to the bones at the skeleton's neck, his bow hand slung around one of the horns as he glanced frantically over his shoulder. Towards Nico, to Hazel, at the monster that they faced. Nico was sprinting across the distance between them, what looked like a shadowy tentacle extending from his knife-less hand that he snapped like a whip at Cerberus' flank sharply enough to draw his attention. Hazel had her spatha raised, though her free hand was sweeping through the air as though wiping at a fog, doing what Will could only fathom –

 _Using the Mist? Hecate's magic? Is that how she does it?_

He didn't get a chance to see its effects. Orthrus' headlong charge quickly took him from view, ploughing through walking Central Park visitors with barely a care for those he nearly ran down. Will caught snatches of "Out of the way!" and "Mounted police!" from around him, but barely paid them a moment's notice as he clung to the bull's neck.

They rounded the stone walls, descending a rocky slope towards what looked to be an iced-over turtle pond of sorts. The bull leapt with the dexterity of a mountain goat down the crumbling rocks, skidding to a stop at the base and nearly throwing Will over the front of his head at he ground to a halt at the base in a spray of snow. Without pausing to see if Orthrus would take him further, Will slid from the bony back and nearly collapsed to the floor. He threw himself towards the rocks, bow still in hand but otherwise forgotten. The pond? Nico had said the doors were there, right? Without a pause to consider himself wrong, Will sung the first song that came to his head.

 _"I can't wait to get you up,_

 _In the morning when the sun is shining bright.  
Gonna be another day with you,_

 _We're gonna run and play and see the day."_

In hindsight, Will would make the connection of the song's relevance, but at that moment he didn't care. He hardly even attended to the words that were spilling from his mouth. His eyes trained upon the wall of grey and brown rocks he'd just descended, half hidden by snow. The sounds of Cerberus' barking, his growling and snarling, echoed from the castle overhead and Will didn't think it was his imagination that they appeared to rapidly be drawing nearer. Whatever Nico and Hazel were doing it was working in getting him down towards the Doors.

The Doors that, suddenly, cracked into existence.

Slowly at first, then with a yawning opening, the rocky face split and spread much like the gaping of doors that it was supposed to be. Will took a stumbling step backwards, still singing in a loud, barely musical tone " _Nobody knows how much I love you, nobody knows how much I care"_. The cracking, crumbling of the doors was a discordant music to his words.

A tunnel. What opened looked like a black tunnel, eating at the white light that flooded into it so that no more than the first few feet inside could be seen with any visibility. Not that Will really had time to look, for above him, in the wake of the passage that the bull had taken, Cerberus appeared.

Doberman Cerberus, jaws snapping and snake-mane hissing and striking like the wind-whipped boughs of a tree, strained and lunged in wild jerks. Before the monster, a leash of shadow extending from his hand to wrap around the giant dog's middle throat, Nico tugged and strained. He was nearly tumbling backwards down the rock face as he dragged the giant dog after him, somehow impossibly retaining his footing.

Cerberus himself alternated between lurching forwards into the leash with a snap towards Nico and lunging backwards again to Hazel who danced around behind it. From what Will could see, she appeared to be alternating between jabbing at the dog's rump with her spatha and reaching high above her head with sweeping arms in a whirling motion that urged something like phantom, faceless figures to dance around her. The figures leapt up at Cerberus' flanks, jabbed the dog with their elbows and jeered, taunting and dancing around his paws. Cerberus snapped at them in crazed agitation, nearly tripping over himself in his attempts.

They all nearly fell down the rock face. Heart in his mouth, Will didn't even get the chance to see if Nico, descending first, was crushed by the weight of the sliding monster, for as they crashed downwards, Orthrus – _bloody Orthrus_ – looped his horn around Will's chest and jerked him a good dozen paces into safety. It was all Will could do to keep singing compulsively, desperately, through his breathlessness

 _"Oh, I'm gonna wag my tail,_

 _Gonna dig a bunch of holes._

 _I don't know why,_

 _But I think it means I love you."_

Nico wasn't crushed. Thank the Gods, Nico wasn't crushed. When Will was lowered back to his feet for long enough to turn back towards them, voice rising in volume and pitch through a mixture of fear and determination, he saw him. Still tugging upon the leash, still dragging at the snapping, growling, jerking and _enormous_ figure of the snake-adorned, three-headed Doberman. Hazel raced behind, leaping to jab at its rump, urging her phantom figures to harass the dog further. They stumbled and fell as much as they ran towards the Doors of Orpheus, sliding over snow in a shower of ice, scrambles and kicks flying everywhere. Nico and Hazel dove and dodged, rolled and leapt to their feet to avoid the biting snaps of the three heads and avoiding so closely that Will's fear only mounted. His bow raised even before he could stop himself, and, still singing with an echoing cry of words, he loosed an arrow towards the giant beast.

It struck Cerberus a skittering blow across the right head. It couldn't have been more than a graze but it was enough to draw the trio of heads' attention momentarily towards Will. Enough for his focus to be shaken enough for Nico, in a wrenching tug that should _not_ have been able to budge a dog that size, heaved him through the doors.

They disappeared. Whether physically or simply into the shadows, Will wasn't sure. Either way, his breath caught and his singing stuttered to a halt. As he did, the doors began to close.

Will was rendered frozen, unable to even begin to sing once more as adrenaline rapidly faded into horror. He stared at the closing doors, the grating of the stone sliding together unblinkingly. _What just -? Where did -? Nico… Nico was_ –

Only moments before they snapped shut, Nico sprung from the shadows of the Doors, Hazel a split second behind him. They landed on the ground in a crash, snow crunching beneath them as their breaths huffed in a mutual grunt. Heaving pants gasping for a moment were all that permeated the air. Then –

"Fucking hell."

"We did it. We actually –"

"Without killing him, we actually –"

They shared a glance. A glance that was both incredulous and dawning in relief. In satisfaction. The expressions looked as foreign on their faces as did Hazel's smile, as though they had rarely if ever been worn. Then, with a grasping of hands, the children of Hades helped one another to their feet.

Then they turned towards Will.

Silence rested between them. Stillness in which Will stared unblinkingly, revelling in the sight of the two of them where his upwelling of panic had faded. He watched as Nico, releasing his hold on Hazel, staggered towards him, shaking his head. "Seriously, Will."

Will was almost too relieved to utter a reply. His own breath still panting heavily more from fear than exertion, he stumbled towards Nico in turn, ducking from the cradle of Orthrus' lowered horns. "What?"

"'The Song My Dog Wrote?' Really? How many years has it been since we saw that video? Of all the fucking songs you could have chosen…"

Will was laughing. Before he even realised what he was doing he was laughing, in sheer relief and ridicule of the situation. So fast it had happened, so quickly, that he'd barely had time to even comprehend the weight of what was happening. His relief turned his muscles to jelly, and he only just managed to make it towards Nico to nearly collapsed atop of him in a crushing embrace.

Thankfully, for whatever reason, Nico didn't seem to object and just let himself be held.

* * *

A/N: For anyone who wanted to know, the song Will was singing (which is absolutely adorable) was "Song My Dog Wrote" by Brendan Biondi. Hope you liked the chapter and please leave a review if you did! Or didn't! Or whatever!


	7. Chapter 7 - Confronting

A/N: Phew, this was another long one! Lots of talking, I'm afraid (not sure if that's a good thing or not?), coupled with a healthy dose of fluff, angst and misery. Enjoy!

* * *

 **Chapter 7: Confronting**

Nico's hands trembled just slightly as he poured the kettle, filling his mug with thin, steaming coffee. Even hours after the incident, hours after the Doors of Orpheus had snapped shut and barred any attempt Cerberus might have made to charge back into the world of mortals, he was still shaking. The aftermath of adrenaline, the adrenaline that could be so disastrous in most people but in demigods was the extra kick that enabled their survival, was still wreaking havoc on his nerves.

That didn't usually happen.

Usually Nico would switch almost immediately back to calm after a monster attack. Calm or exhaustion, depending upon the duration and the intensity of the fight, but always relatively quickly he would revert back to his normal. Even after facing one of the Children rather than the lesser monsters of Echidna's grandchildren he could always instil calm with relative ease.

Cerberus should have been no different. If anything, it should have been easier to fall back into steady breathing, into quelling himself so that Nico's nerves no longer felt zapped as if sparked by a live wire. True, Cerberus had been crazed. He'd morphed back to his ancient form, into that which was called alive by the compulsion of Echidna's orders at the sight of Nico and Hazel, the compulsion that he had fought and inevitably caved beneath. Nico had seen such reverting before, in other confrontations - in the Nemean Lion, how it had appeared more like an actual lion, if gigantic, than the bronze behemoth that it truly was. Or with the gorgons and their modern features, broken only by the head of snake hair that could have been mistaken for dreadlocks at a passing glance. The hydra too, and Phaea the Crommomydion Sow; both had been lesser, an altered version of their mythological selves, as though coloured by the disbelief and disregard of modernity, but upon confronting Nico and Hazel had fallen back into their original states.

Cerberus had fought it. At first he'd fought succumbing, and then, when he'd fallen into the shadowed tunnel to the Underworld, so dark that even Nico's eyes couldn't see properly, he'd calmed once more. The serpentine manes wreathing his heads had faded, snake-like tail stunting and thinning, the heavy bulk of a Rottweiler arising once more to replace the sleeker, sharper lines of a Doberman. He'd even had the presence of mind to nod his head, to offer a heartfelt, almost teary word of thanks to Nico and Hazel before turning to flee back towards Hades.

No, it wasn't the fight against Cerberus that had been straining. It was Will.

Will hadn't been endangered. He hadn't even been the focus of Cerberus' rabid attention, not once throughout the fight. Instead, he'd actually been helpful, offered aid in a way that Nico hadn't anticipated they would need. Loathe as he was to admit it - and admit it he would not – the situation would have been far more difficult had Will not been there. Will and his stupid song that even now filled Nico with the urge to laugh a little hysterically.

Nico didn't laugh. Ever.

Closing his eyes, Nico paused as he raised the coffee cup to his lips. He drew a steading breath of the rich aroma, warm and deep and heady. Coffee had become a habit over the past years, abused to an extent that Nico was sure Will would not have approved of had he known. But it helped, and abuse it he did. It was necessary, what with his almost permanent affliction with insomnia only growing worse over the years. Nico had needed to sharpen his senses and coffee did that. It was most likely a primary contributor to his continued survival.

 _I wonder what Will would say to that,_ he considered. Then he mentally shook himself, as even the contemplation of Will filled him with foreboding and dread once more.

Will hadn't been directly endangered, no. But even so, he still could have died. What is Cerberus had been taken by a bout of the compulsion his mother had afflicted him with, had realised that Will was dear to Nico and had targeted him for it? Orthrus the skeletal bull could only do so much, and Nico and Hazel had only been spared from being afflicted by the brunt of Cerberus' rage for their back and forth prodding for his attention. It had been luck more than anything that neither had obtained anything worse than a few scrapes and bruises. It was certainly the least injured either of them had been after a confrontation with one of the Children before, and Nico put that down to Cerberus' resistance as much as anything. He desperately hoped the giant dog was back within Hades' care once more.

Will shouldn't have been there. Nico had known he should have put up more of a fight when he'd insisted he come along, that he should have done something _before_ Will had even had the opportunity to push his argument to accompany. Will _should not_ have been there, and if he had any sense he'd turn and flee from Nico at the earliest opportunity. Nico wanted him to leave, just as much as he wanted him to stay. He was meant to make him leave if he could. Where had his stubborn resolution faded gone? Had Hazel's simple suggestion been so suggestive as to erase it entirely?

It wasn't safe for Will to be with him. Even less so if he stupidly – _stupidly_ – insisted on accompanying Nico to fight the monsters, to pursue Echidna's children. They had barely vanquished half of them; there were still so many left to confront. What if something happened in one of the fights and Nico wasn't close enough to stop Will from getting injured? What if one of the Children realised who he was and specifically targeted him? Nico only had two eyes, and they had to focus upon the monster he was fighting. If Will was in the fray then he would have to divide his attention towards him. Not that Nico thought Will was necessarily incapable in a fight, but disaster could happen. Mistakes could be made. Monsters could strike, and if Nico wasn't watching then –

"Nico."

He jerked and coffee spilt over Nico's hands at a gentle hand settled on his shoulder. He cursed, quickly lowering the mug it to the kitchen counter and stepping away from the puddle that had splattered upon the floor. Nico shook his hands, frowning in distaste. At least the coffee hadn't been that hot. Wait, it wasn't hot? Hardly even at all? How long had he been standing there in silent stasis?

Glancing over his shoulder, Nico caught sight of Will hastening back from across the room with a dishtowel in hand. Apology tinged his expression as he held offered it with a slight smile. "Sorry. I didn't mean to startle you."

Nico shook his head, his disgruntlement fading into the unease that seemed to afflict him whenever he drew his gaze towards Will. "You didn't startle me."

"Really?" Will raised an eyebrow. "So you fully intended to take a coffee shower in the middle of the kitchen."

"Maybe I did."

"You weren't so lost in thought and completely distracted that you didn't notice me –"

"No."

"- for nearly ten whole minutes?" Will adopted a faintly condescending expression that carried just a hint of the doctor-ly superiority that Nico recalled he had been so prone to wearing in the past. "Honestly, you've been standing here staring into your cup for ages now."

Nico pursed his lips. Well, at least that explained why the coffee wasn't hot anymore. Turning in a deliberate motion to pick up the half-empty mug once more, though as much to avoid meeting Will's stare as anything else, he shrugged. "You would know, would you? Because obviously you've been doing nothing but watching me for the last ten minutes, then?"

His words were spoken sarcastically, almost in jest though Nico didn't feel particularly amused, but Will only shrugged, nodding. "I have."

Nico paused in the act of raising his mug to his lips to stare at him. There was such openness and sincerity in Will's expression, so flooded with the sheer focus of simply staring, that Nico didn't have to struggle to imagine Will spoke the truth. Besides, Nico was something of the same. The only reason he wasn't staring at Will most of the time was because it guilty.

Guilt was not something Nico was particularly fond of experiencing. He'd been actively avoiding feeling as such for years now. Shaking his head, he took a sip of the strong, lukewarm coffee. "Weren't you talking on your phone until five seconds ago?"

"That was ten minutes ago," Will said.

"Who were you talking to?" Nico asked. Not because he was particularly curious but – well, he was a little bit curious. And worried. He wasn't sure that anything Will had to say to anyone in his correspondence, at least regarding his whereabouts and preoccupations of the past two days, couldn't be good. Nico and Hazel were supposed to be as non-existent as was humanely possible. "Unless of course it's a secret."

"It's not a secret," Will said with a shrug. "I wouldn't keep secrets from you, Nico. If you wanted to know something you would just have to ask me."

Nico felt himself flinch, unconsciously twitching at the sparse reprimand in Will's tone. Or maybe there was no reprimand at all and Nico was simply projecting. Either way, he had to drop his gaze down to his mug to avoid Will's stare. "Of course you wouldn't."

There was a pause for silence in which Nico resolutely refused to repeat his question. Will was the one to finally break it. Leaning back against the table behind him, propping his hands upon the edge in a slouch that looked nothing if not perfectly relaxed, he tilted his head slightly before speaking. "I called work, actually. Mainly. I had to tell them that I'd be out of action for a few weeks. Maybe even months."

Nico slowly lowered his mug, feeling his eyes widen. He stared as a mixture of shock, horror and anger well within him. It was perhaps a good thing that his mug was already half empty for the speed at which he swung it around to drop upon the counter would have surely sloshed it free of most of its contents. "What? What the hell, Will?"

Will only shrugged, appearing unfazed by Nico's anger. "I told them it was a family emergency –"

"A family emergency!"

"- which, realistically, it sort of is. I have my priorities."

"Priorities? You have your priorities?" Nico shook his head sharply, fighting to calm himself, to lower his tone. He hadn't raised his voice, hadn't had a reason to do so, for months if not years. It hurt a little to do so, as much because he knew it was induced by panicking hysteria as much as anything else. "You're, what, doing your residency now, right?"

"Right."

"How the fuck do you think you'll be able to take a few weeks off from that? Don't be a fucking idiot, Will."

Will frowned, lips thinning. "I told you, I said it was an emergency."

"Which it isn't."

"To me it is."

"You're an _idiot_."

"I'm getting my priorities straight."

"Your priorities?" Nico repeated, folding his arms across his chest and affixing Will with a glare. "You mean priorities like the one where you train to be a surgeon, like you've wanted to be since before you could even talk properly?"

"I think that's a bit of an exaggeration."

"Really? So the fact that your favourite toys when you were a toddler were the dress-up doctors outfit and plastic stethoscope that you wore like a bloody necklace _in your sleep_ was just a coincidence, was it?"

Far from appearing affronted, the objection in Will's expression actually eased with Nico's words. He even gave a slight smile. "You remember me telling you that?"

Nico stared at him mutely for a moment. Only for a moment, however, before he had to fight with the sudden urge to pick up his mug once more to lob at Will's head. He remembered? He _remembered?_ Of course he fucking remembered. Why wouldn't he? Why wouldn't he after having spent every sleepless night over the past three years, every night he hadn't been fighting monsters and even some nights that he was, when he had to cling to that which he knew he fought for, in reminiscence upon memories of the past? Why wouldn't he be cataloguing them, filing them, flicking through them like the yellowing pages of an old photo album? It was one of the few things that preserved Nico's sanity.

Taking a deep, calming breath that did little by way of actually calming him, Nico briefly closed his eyes. "You're changing the subject."

"No," Will replied, his voice warm in a way that Nico hadn't heard for so long the sound ached in his ears. "I'm not. I'm merely pointing out a wonderful fact."

"You act as though it's something exceptional that I'd remember."

"I wouldn't have been surprised if you didn't."

Nico opened his eyes, fastening his gaze upon Will once more. Though the warmth was still in his tone there was a touch of sadness in his expression. "Why would you think that?"

Will's smile completely faded at his words. He stared at Nico unblinkingly, that faint sadness only growing in a way that made Nico heartily unnerved to bear witness to. Will wasn't sad. Will didn't get sad, not like that. Will was happy, and smiling, and yes, sometimes he did overthink things and worry himself needlessly, but this? This slow, quiet, contemplative sorrow – it wasn't Will, no more than was the frown that had left faint lines on his brow. Nico didn't like it at all.

"Because you left, Nico," was all he said

There it was. As simple as _"because you left"_. Nico had to close his eyes once more to avoid Will's gaze, even as he fought to suppress the urge to immediately refute Will's _stupid_ claim. Because he'd left? He would forget it all just because he left? Because he _had_ to leave, even if he didn't want to and…

Nico could use this. He knew he could use Will's apparent assumptions to his advantage, could use the perceived disregard as a means to forcing Will to leave. He should do it, should use the opportunity that presented itself. But then… why was it so hard to do so? Nico found himself speaking quite against his will before he could help himself. "That doesn't mean anything. Of course it doesn't, you idiot. Why would those to points even be connected? Why would I forget anything? It doesn't – it doesn't make – "

He finally opened his eyes once more to look up at Will. When he did he couldn't look away, no matter how much he wished he hadn't seen the expression that transformed Will's face. It filled him with too much affection, too much of the longing that Nico had been fighting to ignore for years. How was it so much harder to suppress that longing when Will was right before him? Shouldn't it be easier?

It wasn't. It definitely wasn't.

"What?" He said, voice low and almost a growl. It was that or plead to Will to just _not look at him like that_.

But Will's smile had returned, warmer still than it had been before, than Nico had seen in years. "Nothing. I'm just happy, I guess."

"Unnecessarily."

"Very necessarily, I'd say." That damned smile widened further. "I can't really help myself, actually." Pushing himself from the edge of the table, he took a step across the small kitchenette towards Nico until there was barely a foot between them. He didn't touch him, didn't reach for him, for which Nico was thankful for; he wasn't sure if he would simply melt into the touch of whack it aside hard enough to break Will's fingers. Both responses would have been unacceptable to him.

Still staring, Will's smile spread impossibly more fully. "Thank you, Nico. For telling me that."

Nico couldn't reply. He was caught beneath the weight of Will's warm gaze, suspended and immobilised. It was certainly a very good thing that Will didn't touch him, for he almost certainly would have folded into him rather than breaking his hand, and injury that Nico abruptly decided would have been the more preferable of the two possibilities. Even more startlingly, however, and absolutely horribly, Nico found himself on the verge of reaching out to Will instead. Just to touch him, to feel his solidity, to know that he stood before him as he hadn't in years and that he existed. To feel the warmth, the presence, to know that it was Will…

Bless Hazel. Nico wasn't sure if it was accident that sent her striding into the room right at that moment or if she'd interrupted them on purpose. She didn't appear apologetic for her intrusion as she stepped from the bedroom with her head bowed over her phone. The pointed glance she spared Nico, however, suggested that it may have been the latter. Maybe even an apology for taking the opposing side when attempting to convince Will stay away for the fight against Cerberus.

"I got the satellite images back."

That was all she said. Such simple words, but they were enough to shake Nico from the confusing, embarrassing, discomforting and irresistible fuzziness that he'd found himself falling into. Turning from Will, he quickly crossed the room towards her, holding out his hand for the phone. He squinted down at the images displayed, even if he could see perfectly well in the relative darkness of the room. Depicted was a swirling whirlpool of water, churning waves and just faintly, the odd tentacle extending from the white peaks and ominous darkness.

He breathed out in a hiss. "You think –"

"It's got to be, right? She's moved all over the place lately, but that's got to be her. I mean," Hazel reached towards her phone, flicking left through several similar images of varying quality. "It looks almost exactly the same to those that I got from the Bermuda Triangle over the past couple of decades. And you can see her; her tentacles aren't so well camouflaged as to be able to miss. I'm surprised that the mortals can't make it out, even through the Mist."

Nico flicked back and forth between the pictures, nodding as he focused once more upon those that Hazel had just acquired. "I think you're right. I think it is her."

"Which makes two that have cropped up that we could head for next."

"You have a preference on who to go for first?"

"Depends."

"On?"

"On whether you'd rather battle on water or land, I guess."

"Is that really even a question?"

"I guess not," Hazel said with a slight frown, her golden eyes glowing in faint worry in the darkness. "Alright, then, which one would you prefer to get out of the way first?"

Nico nodded. "That's probably a more realistic question to ask."

"What are you talking about?"

Nico turned towards Will at the same moment that he felt Hazel lift her own gaze. Will had drawn back to lean against the table, but the tightness of his grip upon the timber edge suggested it was an effort to keep himself still from crossing the room towards them. "What are the pictures from?"

Nico and Hazel exchanged a glance. In his sister's eyes, Nico could make out the faint apology for her actions that morning, in nearly giving Nico a heart attack for her suggestion, as well as the question, the wariness, the concern all roiling in a confusing whirl. It all bottled down to one question: _what did you want to do?_

Nico didn't know. He wasn't sure what wanted to do, what he even _could_ do. He needed to send Will away and – no. No, what he needed was to wrap him in bubble wrap, lock him in a safe and then wrap him in shadows that he would subsequently ask Hazel to wreath in a coffin of protective and impregnable gemstones that he would secrete somewhere in the Underworld. Yes, that sounded like a perfect idea. That would certainly be the most reliable way to ensure Will's continued good health. He suspected that Will might object to that somehow, though.

That, and the fact that, despite his concern and fears, Nico desperately didn't want to send Will away. Stupidly, his unshakeable longing only seemed to grow with every passing second, making the moment when would eventually have to part from Will all the more painful to contemplate. It was necessary, but a very, very big part of Nico didn't want to send him away. Didn't _want_ to force him away.

Fortunately – or perhaps unfortunately – Will replied before Nico even got the chance. "Nico. Don't even think about it."

"About what?" He asked with casual innocence. No one in the room would be fooled for a moment that Nico didn't know to what Will referred.

"Sending me away," Will replied. "Or ordering me away. Or forcing me away. Any of it." Nico had to fight the urge to shift uneasily at the mirroring of his own thoughts in Will's words. Will himself was a stony statue of objection; Nico could see his jaw visibly tightening. "It's not going to happen. I'm not going to leave."

"It's not your decision –"

"It's as much mine as it is yours," Will overrode him with unnecessary loudness. "More, even, considering it's me that we're talking about."

Nico scowled. "Yeah, and it's me that would be the one that would watch you get decapitated by the monster who took a fancy to the thought of killing you."

"Are you so convinced of my incompetency in fighting monsters? I've been doing this for more than half my life too, you know."

"These monsters are different."

"How so?" Will asked, tilting his head. "How are they different to any of the others?"

"Because they're driven by both vengeance and compulsion."

It was Hazel that answered that time. Quite in contrast to her words of that morning, she seemed nothing if not in alignment with Nico's. Perhaps she'd finally realised how _stupid_ her suggestion had been. Will drew his attention towards her only briefly. "And?"

"And it gives them strength," she expanded. "It gives them added determination. Motivation. Maybe even magical power for the orders of Echidna as their mother."

"And?" Will repeated.

"And," Nico said slowly, deliberately, almost hissing in his frustration. "It means that they will be much harder to kill. And much more inclined to killing you."

Will shrugged. "All the more reason for me to come along."

Nico was only distantly aware, only distantly grateful, that Hazel was staring at Will with the same amount of incredulous confusion for his stupidity as Nico was himself. "How does that make any sense?"

Will shrugged once more. "The more dangerous the monsters are, the more you would benefit from having more hands and more pairs of eyes. More help." He gave a small smile, as though satisfied with his reasoning. "It makes perfect sense to me."

"Yeah, because you're an idiot," Nico muttered in a grumble.

"What was that? Sorry, I've learned basic Italian but all I caught was the word 'idiot' out of that. Speak up if you want me to hear you."

Nico scowled. He hadn't even realised he'd slipped back into his first language, and that Will had to point it out only vexed him. It happened sometimes. Annoyingly. "I said your powers of deduction are greatly skewed and you should probably get that checked out."

"So not an idiot, then?"

Nico's reply was cut off by a vibration from the phone in his pocket. Momentarily distracted, though maintaining his glare at Will throughout, he drew it from his pocket and swiped the phone to life. The brief message drew a frown across his forehead.

"What is it?" Will asked, abruptly concerned. "What's wrong?"

Nico shook his head, deliberately ignoring Will, and held his phone out to Hazel. She quickly scanned the text and frowned herself, raising her gaze to his. "It's definitely the dragon, then? Can he see through the Mist well enough to tell?"

"You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?" Will said, finally pushing himself from the edge of the table and stepping crossing the room.

"What?" Nico asked innocently. Of course they were _._

Will in turn ignored his question and instead managed to slip Nico's phone from Hazel's fingers. He frowned at the text himself. "What does this mean? Dragon? What dragon is this talking about?" He glanced between Nico and Hazel as they both remained silent, then heaved a long-suffering sigh. "You can either tell me or I can guess at the both of you until I get the right answer."

Nico glanced at Hazel. Hazel stared right back at him. Nico didn't want to tell Will, didn't want him anymore involved than he already was. But listening to Will's guessing for the next however long it took for him to guess correctly didn't sound like favourable circumstances either. With a sigh, feeling his shoulders slump slightly in defeat, Nico nodded towards Hazel. Better that she explain. She was less likely to get angry in a fit of worry.

Hazel turned towards Will with a sigh of her own. "We've found two more than we're pretty certain are the Children."

"Two more?" Will asked, his casualness abruptly fading. "How many more are there?"

"Hopefully?" Hazel glanced towards Nico. "No more that five. Maybe six, but we're not entirely sure. They've started showing themselves more recently, though, actually hunting us more over the past few months."

Will's face hardened once more at Hazel's words in what Nico recognised as being an expression of angry protectiveness. "How many have you already fought?"

Nico and Hazel exchanged another glance. For Nico, it was to see the sight of every fight they'd shared, both those triumphant and the ones that they – or less frequently the monsters themselves – had fled from. He saw Phaea the Sow, raging and ruddy, eyes smouldering in fury and hatred, and the gorgons with their screeches echoing in his ears. He recalled the Nemean Lion and the feel of his leg breaking cleanly even as he managed to pierce the monster's hide with his sword, and Orthrus with his snapping jaws and growling cries of vengeance. The hydra, too, the appearance of the creature that had first driven Hazel into hiding that day two and a half years ago. The one that she had first had to flee from, to draw away from her home in San Francisco that she shared with Frank. Hazel had hated that hydra with a vengeance herself for the danger it had nearly inflicted upon Frank.

"Seven," they murmured in unison.

Will uttered a strange sound in the back of his throat that drew Nico's attention back towards him. His face was tightened in surprise, in wide-eyed concern and just a touch of… awe? Slowly, he shook his head. "Incredible."

"Hardly incredible," Nico muttered. "More…"

"Luck," Hazel said with a sigh. "Luck and persistence."

Will stared switched his gaze between them for a moment before shaking his head. "Incredible," he murmured again, then seemed to shake himself into focus once more. "Then what is this? The dragon? And the other one, the one that you were talking about before, Hazel?"

"The Colchian Dragon," she supplied. "We weren't sure that was what it was at first, but Nico's contacts seem to have deduced that it is."

"Contacts?" Will asked.

"Just people," Nico said quietly. He didn't really want to go into any depth about the mortals he'd drawn into his troubles, the few mortals that were perceptive and sharp-eyed enough to see through the Mist and notice when something wasn't quite right. He felt shame for involving them at all, though in many ways it was better than calling upon the aid of any demigods. Monsters weren't attracted to mortals, even those that could hazily see them. Like the eccentric young woman who had sent him the message from the borders between southern Quebec and Ontario about the Colchian Dragon. Nico had talked to her enough – minimally, but enough – to know that she was more than just an eccentric. More than the slightly insane hippie that most mortals seemed to consider her.

"You trust the information that you've been given?" Will asked.

"I do."

Will nodded, as though he simply accepted Nico's word as good enough for him. Quite possibly he did. "Alright. So the Colchian Dragon. Right." He nodded once more, and Nico got the impression he was attempting to coach himself, to calm the worry and perhaps the fear, that was threatening to spread in a frown across his face once more. "And the other one?"

"Scylla," Hazel said shortly. "The Sea Goddess. Or monster, depending on how you perceive her."

"Scylla?" Will stared at her with raised eyebrows. "As in the monster in the Bermuda Triangle?"

"No longer in the Triangle," Hazel said. "And from how I've been tracking it, through satellite and news reports, it doesn't take a genius to realise that she's following our movements. There wouldn't be any other reason for her to appear anywhere near the Gulf of Maine. That and the pictures."

"Scylla?" Will repeated, his frown becoming confused. "Hold on, aren't these Echidna's children that's supposed to be chasing you? Scylla isn't a child of Echidna, is she? I'm relatively confident in my knowledge of history – she's not."

Hazel shook her head. "Not literally, no. She's an adopted child of a sort."

"Adopted? Can monsters even do that?"

"Apparently," Hazel shrugged.

"We think that it has something to do with her inherent vengefulness. She's wrapped up in loathing that practically consumes her," Nico said quietly. "She's angry, hateful, and has been an enemy of both gods and demigods for millennia. Echidna thrives on that."

"And she's powerful, too," Will said, frowning. "Which I'd guess would probably be why Echidna choose a creature like Scylla over something like a siren who's practically harmless so long as you know how to ignore them." He paused, turning his frown into the middle distance. "So she's allied with her?"

"Been adopted by her, yes," Hazel nodded. "Much in the same way that Medusa was."

"Medusa?" Will blinked before giving something that looked like a faint shudder. "And Medusa is –"

"Dead," Nico said curtly. It was a struggle to keep his tone emotionless but he managed. It was that or cave beneath the guilt of killing even the vengeful, seething, crazed creature herself, guilt that arose regardless of the wrongs she'd done and the people, demigods and otherwise, she'd killed. Or turned to stone, more correctly, to add to her endless collection. She's picked up doing that all over again with her revival but years before.

"Right. Right, well… I see." Will appeared to be slowly attempting to process the information in a way that was far less flooded with twitches and winces than Nico would have anticipated. "So what's the plan?"

"That's what we were just considering," Hazel said, glancing towards Nico. He saw her gaze harden with the familiar determination she always wore. "It's better to turn on the monsters and strike them before they catch up with us. At least, that's what Nico and I have worked out through trial and error. So that's probably what we're going to do."

"Which one are we going after first?"

"We?" Nico narrowed his eyes. "There is no 'we' in this equation."

"Shut up, Nico, and stop being so objectionable."

"Don't tell me to shut up, Will."

"What, so I'm not allowed tell you to be quiet even though you've done the same to me how many times before?"

"Of course not, because my attempts to silence you are always justified."

Will nodded his head as though Nico had just agreed with him. "Exactly. So I'm entirely entitled to do the same when I'm similarly justified." Then he turned deliberately back to Hazel, as though brushing Nico's objections aside entirely. "Which one?"

Hazel peered sidelong at Nico for a moment, as though wondering if she should continue at all. Nico shook his head though more in resignation than denial, despite the frustration and concern that arose within him at Will's words. Slowly, she continued. "Well, I suppose it would make more sense to target the Colchian Dragon first. Being a creature of the land makes him more of an immediate threat."

Will nodded contemplatively, as though he were actually considering the idea as one would a battle strategy. "That makes sense, what with Scylla being water-bound and all."

"Maybe not exactly 'bound'," Nico muttered. His frustration still added a slight grumble to his words but he managed to continue regardless. "Echidna's children, adopted and otherwise, tend to have a way of managing to overcome those boundaries. I wouldn't be surprised if she burst through the sewage system if we avoided her for long enough."

Will's lips quirked in an expression of distaste. "Lovely."

"But likely."

"Which is why we'd have to strike them quickly," Hazel continued. "Hit them both and take them out as fast as we can before the rest of them try to jump us."

"Do you know what the rest of them are?" Will asked. "Or more specifically I suppose, because you can probably deduce the 'what' from the histories, where they are?"

Nico and Hazel exchanged another of their frequent glances. "We have a hunch," Hazel said.

Will nodded slowly, thoughtfully. His fingers rose to rub at his forehead as if massaging his thoughts into order. "Alright then," he said once more. "That sounds like the bones of a plan at least. Maybe we could work something out after you both have a bit of a rest."

"There is no 'we'," Nico repeated. Will ignored him.

"As a certified doctor, my prognosis for now is that you both get some sleep." He glanced at Nico, an understanding in his eyes that Nico wasn't particularly happy to see. "Or if not sleep than just rest."

"We're fine," he said.

"The sooner we head out again the better," Hazel agreed.

"And the more likely you'll be to seriously hurt yourselves if you face a monster when you're not at your best," Will countered.

Nico cursed beneath his breath. "Will, we don't have time for this. If we don't act quickly –"

"Surely a night of rest won't make an insurmountable amount of difference," Will overrode him, his doctor's tone pronounced and hands actually dropping down to prop on his hips in that way that he did. Nico didn't know whether to be more infuriated or fondly exasperated by the pose. "Besides, you've already defeated one monster today. Maybe pacing yourself a bit might not be a bad thing."

"Will –"

"Nico," Will cut him off again. "Please."

Nico's objections froze on his tongue despite himself. _Damn him. Damn him and his stupid 'please's and damn him for his eyes. Why does he have to look at me like that, like he wants nothing more in the world than for me to actually go to sleep?_ Nico struggled to bite back the curses that swirled around like a broken record in his mind without spilling forth and wasn't entirely successful. Finally he shook his head and scowled. "Gods, you're so annoying, you stupid Quack."

Will actually smiled at that. "I have been called as such before, yes."

"Deservedly, most likely," Nico muttered.

"I meant by you."

Nico was silenced once more. _Oh. That's what he meant_. Then he shook his head once more. "We're fine, Will. And time does matter –"

"You're not fine, Nico. You're exhausted. And, even if you think you're able to plough on through your exhaustion, what about Hazel? Just look at her."

Hazel started slightly at the suggestion, meeting Nico's gaze as he felt his attention drawn to her by the order. Drawn and actually looking this time. Seeing. What he saw, what he overlooked in her as much as he did in himself, silenced him.

Hazel did look tired. Exhausted, even. Her eyes were heavy, her cheeks thin and the darkness settled upon her cheekbones more pronounced than he could recall ever seeing before, or at least ever noticing. Her hair was frazzled, springing in static curls from her braid that, alongside the stains and rips of her clothes, made her look even more careworn. Nico hadn't really noticed, not for a long time. Not since Hazel had expressly ordered him not to notice the last time he'd said anything.

In this instance at least, Will was right. Nico was almost tempted to tell his sister to take herself to bed and simply leave anyway, to attempt to chase down the Colchian Dragon alone. Except that he knew Hazel wouldn't stand for that. She would certainly demand she accompany him. They were both stubborn like that.

Finally, slowly, Nico nodded. He deliberately ignored the smile that spread across Will's face as he did; it was positively beaming, radiant, unlike any he had seen in the past forty-eight hours. It seemed to brighten up the room in a way that Nico recalled Will _always_ used to. "Fine. Whatever. Just a short rest, though. We can't wait too long before we start looking again."

"That's all I'm asking," Will chimed contentedly, the worry for once actually easing entirely from his face.

Nico scowled. "No it bloody well is not 'all you're asking'."

"No, it's not," Will agreed easily. "But it's a start." Then he stepped forwards and, like the mother hen that Nico had so long ago teased him of being, urged Nico and Hazel back towards the bedroom. "Come on then, you two. Early to bed, early to rise."

"Shut up, you bloody chicken," Nico grumbled, the nickname referring to Will's maternal attitude rising forth before he could stop it.

Will only laughed. He actually laughed. Nico was jarred by the sound, as much as he bathed in its music. It was the first time such had ever been heard in their little flat.

* * *

The doorbell rang.

Instantly, Nico froze. He froze in exactly the same moment, in exactly the same way, that Hazel did across the room from him, hand resting upon the kitchen tap as she turned the water off with dripping fingers. She turned with wide, wary eyes towards Nico, the ominous question upon her lips unvoiced.

Slowly, Nico lowered his fork weighted by pasta back into his bowl. It was the first actual food he'd eaten in… he couldn't remember how long. Generally, Nico sustained himself on granola bars, bread and the occasional apple simply for convenience's sake. Not under Will's hard eye, however. Nico hadn't even known that they had pasta in the house until Will unearthed it. Perhaps he'd had that stuffed in his seemingly bottomless pockets alongside the ambrosia? It wouldn't have surprised him, Though Will had never been much of a cook, and still wasn't, it was possibly the best food that Nico had ever eaten. Ever.

His palate turned the food on his tongue to a sticky mush at the echoing sound of the doorbell, however. No one rang the doorbell, just as no one knocked on the door. Not even the landlord anymore, who Nico had done nothing more than stare at when he'd come to greet he and Hazel officially two months before. Apparently staring was enough to cow the portly little man into disappearance and the occasional rent letters slipped beneath the door.

Rising to his feet, Nico cast a glance towards Will at his side. Will had similarly paused in making his way through the makeshift dinner to glance in the direction of the front door. They'd been silent since they'd sat down, less than half an hour after Hazel had awoken from a bare five hours of sleep. Nico hadn't managed a wink himself, which wasn't surprising. Will broke that silence as he turned towards Nico's rise to standing. "Do you want me to…?"

Nico shook his head, even as Hazel made her way towards the front door. In her hand, slipping from her waist, was a long knife of Stygian iron, one of only three that existed in the entire world and crafted by her own hand. She slipped silently towards the door, pressing her back against the wall alongside it as Nico himself stepped out from behind the table to her side. A shake of his wrist, a flick of his fingers, and he slipped his own knife into his hand.

"Me?" He murmured, barely a whisper.

Hazel shook her head. "No, I will."

"Guys, wait a second," Will said from across the room, his voice loud in contrast to their quietness in a way that drew a scowl from Nico. Will didn't even seem to see it as he too rose to his feet. "You don't know that it's a monster."

"What else could it be?" Nico hissed, barely audibly.

"A friendly neighbour, perhaps? Your landlord? The postman even?"

"We don't get post."

"Even so –"

"Shut up, Will."

Thankfully, Will fell silent. H held his tongue long enough for Hazel to ease herself towards the door, flick the latch with silent fingers, and grasp the handle. Nico held his breath, heart pounding rhythmically in his chest. Was it a monster? It would be the first that had come to their actual house. Or at least to this house. There was a reason Nico and Hazel had moved more than a dozen times over the two and a half years.

Hazel moved quickly. In a fluid twist, the tension of her muscles evident even through her jumper, she spun towards the door, flung it open and fell into a half-crouch with knife raised. Only to pause. To stare. To actually _drop_ her knife.

Then she flung herself at Nico.

Nico barely had time to lower his own knife before she crashed into him. His head smacked back against the wall, his breath heaved from his chest as Hazel threw her entire weight at him in a desperate bid for solace. Her arms clutched around his waist in a hold that was almost painful, head pressing into his shoulder as she struggled to hide her face. The tension that thrummed through sent tight trembles through her body.

Nico was stunned. For a moment, a brief moment, he even forgot to remain wary of whatever was on the other side of the front door. He and Hazel didn't hug one another. They barely even touched each other with any kind of intimacy, with the exception of pressed shoulders as they peered over a map or a computer screen, the touch of gentle fingers as they bound a wound or the firm grasp of holding one another on their feet to stumble from scene of a battle. This was unprecedented. Hazel was terrified, but not into the fighting action that he would have expected from such terror. She appeared to be attempting to burrow into him, to hide, even.

The reason for her response stepped through the door with slow, heavy, tentative footsteps.

Frank had changed in the years since Nico had seen him in ways that were more pronounced than those in Will. He was a little thinner, eyes heavy as though worn and wearied. His face had a darker tan to it, bespeaking more time spent outdoors but not in a particularly healthy way. He seemed almost unwell. And the tightness around his eyes, the slight impression of wrinkles that reminded Nico of the faint lines on Will's forehead, made him look older than he was.

Those eyes were trained unwaveringly upon Hazel. There was such adoration within them, such grief and pain, that Nico almost wanted to turn Hazel towards him himself just so that she could see it. Just so that she could behold the pure love radiating from him that no one could possibly miss. Even in such a short moment, even knowing what he did and how vitally important it was for Hazel to stay away from him, just as Nico did for Will, he wanted to push her upon him. It just wasn't right that they were apart. Not if such distance could provoke such an expression from the kindly bear of a young man.

Frank shuffled into the room, boots scuffing the floors and shoulders hunching slightly to stretch at the breadth of his dark purple fleece. His hands were tucked into the pockets of his cargo pants awkwardly, as though he didn't know what else to do with them. "Haze?"

Nico felt his sister twitch in her hold of him, a tight grasp that forbade him from even returning the gesture for his arms pinned at his sides. She gave a slight, feeble moan that was barely audible and only pressed herself more closely into him. Miserable. Horrified. Confused and desperate and longing and warring with herself. That was what she felt. Nico knew because he'd been exactly the same not a day before.

He raised his gaze from her bowed head, of barely a lesser height than himself and yet tucked and buried shorter than she was. His met Frank's eyes that seemed to struggle to draw their attention from the back of Hazel's head. He looked on the verge of tears for the longing that welled within them.

And that wasn't it. That wasn't all. Nico had barely registered the possibility, the chance happenstance that _Frank_ , that _Hazel's_ Frank, could be standing in their house, when a cluster of figures appeared in the doorway behind him. Faces, familiar and beloved, memorised in their expressions of teasing affection, of frustration and determination, of sadness and surprise and shock and –

It was them. Those he'd left behind. Those he'd have to leave behind. Those that Nico should _never_ happen upon, not when Echidna and her children still hounded him. Not when there was such a chance that they'd become endangered. It made him feel sick to even contemplate the reality that _they were here._

Nico closed his eyes. He was glad in that moment that Hazel was holding onto him, even if the feeling was so foreign that he felt the need to shiver from the touch. He feared that had she not been he would have crumpled from the floor in an attempt to hide himself, to sink into the wooden floorboards, to draw himself into the shadows. Which, when he considered it, was not altogether a bad idea.

"Nico."

He couldn't ignore that voice. He never could. Nico would always be a slave to Will's suggestion, to his pleading, even muffled as it was. Will must have somehow suspected what thoughts were running through his mind; he'd somehow appeared at his side, a hand dropping to Nico's shoulder.

Nico opened his eyes once more, and peered up at Will's open, faintly apologetic face. Apologetic but shameless nonetheless. He knew what he'd done and wasn't sorry for it. Sorry for causing Nico and Hazel distress maybe, but for his actions themselves? No.

Anger couldn't quite manage to scramble a foothold within Nico for the fear that it battled against but it didn't stop him from embedding it in his voice, even if a croaky hoarseness, a harsh quietness, accompanied it. "Will. What did you do?"

Even as Nico's shoulder twitched in an attempt to shrug Will's had from its hold, his fingers tightened. They squeezed as though they would never let go. "I did what I had to. What should have been done years ago, because I'm going to make sure that you don't die, Nico."

"You didn't have the right –"

"The right? I didn't have the right?" Despite the indignation of his words, Will's tone was calm. Almost placid. Soothing. "What right did you have to take yourself away from me, Nico? To take yourself away from us?" He made a gesture towards the figures standing still and silent and watching in the doorway. "You and Hazel both. It wasn't fair, and it was dangerous of you to do it. And before you try to convince me otherwise, let us convince you."

"You're not going to –"

"We can try," Frank said quietly. His deep voice, tight with sorrow yet determined nonetheless, sounded faintly pleading. "Please, Hazel, Nico, let us try. Or even if you won't accept that, let us at least talk to you."

Whether it was Frank's words or Will's argument, Nico wasn't sure, but even though every bone within him was screaming for him to flee, to tell his friends – his stupid, foolish, too-kind-hearted friends – to flee, he couldn't speak. Neither did Hazel. With a welcoming gesture as though urging them into the house, Will beckoned those waiting in the hallway to enter.

The house felt as packed as a McDonald's chip packet. For the first time in… in _ever_ , there were more than three people within its walls, the little room abruptly almost claustrophobically flooded with bodies. Nico remained where he was against the wall beside the door. He couldn't have moved had he wanted to, what with Hazel still wrapped around him like a strangler vine and holding him as though he were the only thing maintaining her sanity. He didn't complain, even when his arms began to protest for being pinned painfully against his sides. His focus was trained upon the young men and women filling up every corner of the room, just as Hazel, gradually, tentatively, almost cringingly peered over her shoulder towards them all.

They were all so familiar, so the same but for a few differences. There was Percy, his familiar head of overlong, tousled bangs turned towards Nico and face just a shade or two darker for the sun that shouldn't have even been strong enough to produce such an effect in winter. Annabeth was at his side, blonde curls raked back into a loose bun and dressed in a casual pantsuit beneath a thick jacket as though she'd just come from work.

There was Jason standing in the far corner and leaning against the wall, thumb and forefingers scratching across a faint stubble upon his chin and gaze sweeping towards Nico and Hazel, then around the room, then back to Nico and Hazel again from behind square glasses that looked different to the ones Nico recalled. Piper stood next to him, different to how Nico recalled but only in her fashion sense – despite the coldness of winter, she wore only loose fisherman's pants tucked into the top of something that wasn't exactly Ugg boots, a long shirt of billowing sleeves failing to hide the small jewellery store of leather bracelets, ties and rings about her hands. Her hair was chopped shorter, just above her shoulders with half a dozen braids and bright, dangling ties thrown into the mix. Her smile was entirely the same, though; small but genuine, unassuming yet steady.

Leo filled one of the dining chairs, elbows propped upon the table around Calypso that seated herself assumingly upon his knees, legs crossed. He'd grown a beard of sorts that did nothing to dampen his easy smile, and there was a smudge of something dark that could have been grease upon his cheek near his ear. Calypso looked as she always had – casually beautiful, a band of leather holding back her fringe and large hoop earrings dangling from her ears. The appearance was tinged nothing for the grime that coloured her fingers folded upon the table, a filth such a similar colour to that which streaked Leo's cheek that Nico could only think she'd put it there herself.

And then there was Frank, barely moved from his three feet away from Hazel. Frank alongside Will, whose hand still curled around Nico's shoulder as though he were afraid Nico would flee the moment he was given the opportunity. As if he could. As if he could run away from them all when they looked at him as they did, even if he could pull himself free of Hazel's terrified grasp. Hazel had faced down Orthrus with nothing but her hands and her magic when her spatha had been torn from her, Nico thrown to the ground with a blow that had nearly knocked him senseless. Now, however, she was nearly trembling in the face of the open, loving, caring expressions of the friends they'd had to leave behind.

Nico couldn't blame her. He felt the urge to quail himself. The walls of his determination, of his self-imposed ostracism, were rapidly crumbling like the dry sand of a hastily built sandcastle. No matter how he tried to grab at it, it still sunk to pieces.

Glancing towards Will, his voice barely more than a whisper, Nico shook his head. "What did you…?"

"I did what I had to do," Will said slowly, almost sadly, and with just a touch of pleading that made Nico wince. "I did what I thought would be the most effective way to ensure you survived."

"You called –"

"I did."

Nico struggled to pin Will with a glare and feared he failed dismally. He was not such a fool as to think that they had all happened to be within short travelling distance of Vermont, let alone the National Park-side town that Nico and Hazel had secreted themselves in. Which meant that Will had manipulated the situation, that what Nico had taken for being his usual doctoring attentiveness, his usual mother hen-ing as he'd coaxed them to bed, was in fact a ploy on his part. Or at least partially a ploy. Five, six hours – it was likely with that time the rest of his forces had used to descend upon Nico and Hazel's flat. "You said you didn't keep secrets," Nico managed to choke out. "So much for that, Will. You fucking _told_ them."

"I never said I didn't," Will rationalised, with only the barest hint of guilt in his tone that could have been Nico's imagination. It most likely was; Will had never been one to effusively apologise for his actions. It took time and deep overthinking for him to manage that. "I would have told you if you'd asked who else I'd called."

"Would you? Would you really?"

Will shrugged one shoulder. "I guess we'll never know."

"Bastard."

Will only smiled.

Silence followed. It was a silence in which Nico felt like a deer amidst a pack of wolves, all eyes turned towards him when they weren't drawn around the room in the natural wariness every demigod assumed in an unfamiliar setting. It was Leo – of course it was Leo – who spoke up first. "Gods, you two. You look like shit."

Just like that, the ice seemed to break. At least it did for the rest of them, if not for Nico or Hazel. Mutters and groans of resignation sounded throughout the room. "Really, Valdez?" Percy sighed. "Really? Choice."

"Wonderful way to initiate a convincing argument," Annabeth said with a shake of her head.

Calypso reached behind herself and cuffed him over the back of the head, leaving another faint streak of blackness on his ear as Frank turned his frown upon him. "Can it, Leo."

"Yeah, speak for yourself," Will added.

"Hey, hey, what's with all this? Is it 'gang up on Leo Valdez' day or something?" Leo frowned in clearly false indignation, raising both of his hands into the air in a placating gesture. "Give a man a break for being honest."

"Sometimes I think your honestly borders on tactlessness more than bluntness," Piper said, Jason nodding sagely in agreement beside her. "How many years have we been trying to instil some sense into you?"

" _Your_ idea of sense. I tend to quite like my own kind."

"Shame that no one else does," Jason said with a small smile.

Nico's eyes darted between his friends, jumping from speaker to speaker as they quipped their own contributions. It was so casual, so comfortable, and so detached from anything that Nico had partaken in for so long that he almost ached at the sight of it. Closing his eyes he dropped his forehead briefly to the side of Hazel's head. She only squeezed him more tightly in response.

The banter eased continued but finally slowed, solemnity settled upon the room once more. Although, solemn as it was, the awkward silence didn't return with it. Quietness, patience in waiting, but not awkwardness.

Finally, Percy spoke. "So. You're hunting the children of Echidna."

"And then some," Annabeth added.

Percy nodded. "And then some."

Turning to glance sidelong at Will, Nico struggled and failed once more to glare. Will only offered another shrug. "I told them everything that I've been told."

"Don't blame Will," Piper said. "He only told us so much because we badgered him."

"And by badgered, Piper means that she might have Charmed him into it just a little bit," Leo corrected.

"I did not," Piper said primly. "I wouldn't be so underhanded. Not in this case."

"She didn't," Will affirmed, never taking his eyes from Nico for an instant. "And she didn't badger me. I would have told them all of it anyway. If they're going to help us they need to know."

"Help?" Hazel croaked into Nico's shoulder.

"Us?" He whispered at the same time.

"Of course," Percy said. He sat up slightly onto the couch, turning more fully towards Nico and Hazel with one arm slung loosely over the back. "Wouldn't miss it for the world."

"It's been a while since we've gone on a quest of any kind. Or of any particular magnitude," Jason said with his typical smile. The shifting of his feet, an unconscious, jittery response of just about every demigod, suggested he was ready to spring into action at any moment.

"It'll be just like old times," Leo said, flashing his own grin more widely. "Been a while since we had all of the crew together. Even before you two… went off to do your own thing."

"Very diplomatic of you there, Leo," Calypso murmured.

"Thanks, babe."

"I've told you not to call me that. So many times."

"Sorry."

Nico was shaking his head even before the pair exchanged mutters. "No. Not going to happen."

"Yes, it –"

"No, Will. It isn't," Nico overrode him. He shoved the faint warble from his voice to continue. "Don't you think there is a reason that Hazel and I did what we did?"

"Yeah," Jason said slowly. "A stupid reason."

"Jason –"

"No, Nico. It was a stupid reason." Jason pushed himself upright from where he leant upon the wall to stand straight. He had always been a tall, and his crossed arms and set shoulders only enhanced the impression. "We're supposed to stick together. That's what comrades do in a battle."

"It's what friends do," Piper added quietly.

Annabeth nodded was nodding along with just about everyone in the room as she affixed Nico with a sharp stare. "I'm not going to mention the past or it's foolishness –"

"I think you just did," Percy said.

"- but only speak of the future. Of what we're going to do." Annabeth blatantly ignored Percy's interruption. "And that is to work as a team to fight the remaining monsters that are hounding you."

"You don't understand," Hazel said, finally turning to more fully face the room even as she maintained her grasp upon Nico. "We can't do that."

"Why not?" Frank said, his words so quiet they were almost inaudible.

Hazel heard them, though. She turned towards him as though her gaze was magnetised. Nico couldn't see her expression but he could hear the mournfulness in her tone. "Because if any of them, any of the monsters we fight, see you with us then they'll target you too. They'll try to kill you, just for being with us. Just because we care about you."

"Do you still care?" Frank asked.

Nico felt himself flinch, though he wasn't entirely sure if it was Hazel or he who did so. With a faint whimper, almost a sob, Hazel turned back away from him and into Nico. He could just see the glassiness of tears in her eyes before she dropped her head onto his shoulder once more.

"Man, bellow the belt," Leo said quietly. His smile had actually fallen from his face.

"I had to ask," Frank muttered. As Nico drew his eyes towards him, he could make out the same grief and pain that he's glimpsed in Hazel's. _They are so alike in their feelings. If only they could see that. Although… maybe it's better if they don't. Maybe it would be easier for me and Hazel if… if they didn't…_

Will spoke up into the return of an awkward silence. "No. No, you didn't have to ask. Because I would have told you." Drawing his gaze around the room at large, Will seemed to pause to meet the eyes of every person in attendance. His hand squeezed tightly upon Nico's shoulder once more. "I could have told you the reality of the situation. I mostly did, too, and it's because they," Will made a brief gesture towards Nico and Hazel with his free hand, "are idiots."

There was silence for a moment, in which Nico stared at Will in confusion and just the beginnings of affront. Even Hazel tilted her head slightly towards him.

Leo's smile actually returned in part. "What?"

Will nodded. "Yeah. Idiots. Because they care more about our safety, even though they didn't _tell_ us so." He paused to spare a faintly reproving glance to Nico. "They care too much about us to risk jeopardising our safety so instead throw themselves into the path of bloodthirsty monsters with no help but each other. They could have asked for it, but they didn't. Echidna drew a target on both of their backs, so they _stupidly_ thought it was their responsibility and theirs only to take her down. Her and all of her kids who have a taste for vengeance and a compulsive urge to hunt them down."

Another silence fell, Will's words ringing more loudly for it. Nico opened his mouth to refute him, to claim that he was wrong, that it wasn't some sort of self-sacrifice but simple necessity. That it made sense for it to be only he and Hazel. Just them.

Then Percy spoke. "Well. That's stupid."

"Definitely stupid," Jason agreed.

"I think the term 'misguided' probably fits more appropriately," Annabeth said. "Or perhaps 'foolishly misguided'."

"And unnecessary," Calypso murmured, leaning backwards slightly into Leo so that she could cross her arms across her chest. "Entirely unnecessary."

"Unnecessary," Frank echoed in a murmur, nodding head in agreement. "That would just –"

"You'd just be making everything harder for yourselves," Leo finished for him, unasked for, unrequested in his intervention yet accepted nonetheless. "I mean, really? The more people you have to help you the better chance you have of winning, right?"

Hazel shook her head into Nico's shoulder before twisting her head awkwardly to peer at their friends. No, to peer at Frank. She seemed unable to look anywhere else when facing the room. "That's not how it works. You don't understand." She sounded utterly miserable.

"Then explain it to us," Percy said, dropping his chin onto the back of the couch.

Hazel peered up at Nico, the glassiness still swimming in her eyes. Nico couldn't blame her. He wasn't feeling much more composed himself, and presumed that Hazel likely felt much the same as he had upon first happening across Will. At least Nico had experienced it once already, knew what to expect if only vaguely. He was prepared just a little, could calm himself from the rising panic that surfaced at the possibility of endangering his friends enough to keep himself together.

He took the baton of speech from her and, chin dropping towards her head as she lowered it back onto his shoulder in a gesture almost exhausted in its slump. Nico couldn't blame her. This was an entirely different type of exhausting to what they was used to, to fighting monsters and dodging the snapping jaws of death. In many ways, it was even more tiring.

Nico took a deep breath. "Echidna is after _us._ She in hunting _us_ because Hazel and me are the only ones able to defeat her and her children. Permanently." Nico's hands gripped the hem of Hazel's shirt. "She hates us for what we've already done, _hates_ us, to such a degree that she'd extend it to anyone we care about. An eye for an eye."

"She wants to kill the people you care about because you did the same to her," Annabeth said quietly, her words eerily similar to those the Chimaera had told Nico so long ago.

He nodded. "Which is why we can't drag anyone else into our problems."

"It's why we had to leave in the first place," Hazel muttered, her voice muffled.

"And it's why you can't stay with us. Or try to help."

"Because it will only end in disaster.

"Someone will get hurt."

"They'll know who we can't stand to lose."

"They'd target you all the more for it."

Nico met Hazel's gaze as she lifted it from his shoulder. There was understanding there, an understanding that no one else in the world shared. That no one else could truly fathom because no one else was in quite as compromised position. It wasn't the same as other quests, with other monsters. It wasn't –

"Bullshit."

Nico raised his gaze towards Will. He was frowning – no, Will was glaring. It was possibly the first time Nico had truly seen as much, different to his frown in anger or frustration or annoyance. He was pissed off in a way that Nico wasn't familiar with at all. "Will –"

"No, Will's right," Percy said. He rose from the couch, a frown settling upon his forehead. "It is. It's bullshit."

"It's not –" Hazel began.

"Yes, it is," Annabeth said, rising slowly from the couch to stand beside Percy. She looked tall, sleek and confident, taking none of it. "You're both blinded by your fear for us. For all of us."

"You're forgetting something integral," Jason said, carrying on from her as Piper nodded in agreement at his side. "Overlooking the obvious."

"And that is that we face that kind of danger every time we go into battle," Frank finished. He was still staring at Hazel, but there was determination welling in his gaze, shouldering aside his sorrow. "Every time we face a monster we're putting our life on the line. This is no different."

"It _is_ ," Hazel said. She spun towards Frank, finally releasing her grasp upon Nico so suddenly that he sagged back against the wall as she took a step away from him. "It _is_ because this is _Echidna's_ children. And probably Echidna herself eventually, if we actually manage to survive that long."

"So we're facing monsters a bit bigger and a bit more terrifying," Leo said, shrugging. "I've always liked a challenge."

"This is more than a challenge, Leo," Hazel persisted, her voice rising. She actually managed to pry her gaze away from Frank for a second to glance towards him. "These are the most dangerous monsters –"

"You're forgetting we faced Gaea," Leo pointed out. "The mother of all evil in her filthy magnitude."

"Filthy? Really?" Jason smirked. "You make her sound like a porn star."

"That's certainly an interesting way of looking at Gaea," Calypso said with a touch of her own smirk.

"Could you imagine what she'd say if you actually called her that?" Percy chuckled. "Where's your one-liners when we need then, Leo?"

"Oh, I make sure I write them down in advance nowadays," Leo said, waving a casual hand in Percy's direction. "I study them in my spare time."

"Says he who protested to the very notion of going back to school," Annabeth muttered shaking her head disapprovingly.

"Hey, I wasn't the only one. Piper didn't, and Calypso hasn't had a day of schooling her entire life."

"Much to my displeasure," Calypso grumbled. "I would have liked to go to school."

"I said I could have pulled some strings for you at my college," Annabeth said with a sigh.

"Yeah, but it wouldn't have been the same as going to high school or something. That's a missed opportunity I can never remedy!"

It was as simple as that. Just like that, so easily, the sobriety of the scene, the solemnity of the conversation, disintegrated into playful teasing and banter. Nico, still as tense as a bowstring, flipped his gaze between each speaker as they opened their mouths. It was disconcerting, that Ping-Pong game of voices, and it was only then that he truly realised how socially inept he'd become. The situation was entirely foreign to him. He didn't know how to respond, what to say in the face of the light-heartedness when he felt so miserably sore. A brief glance towards Hazel showed she was feeling at least a little of the same.

Finally, Leo drew the conversation to the topic at hand. He actually had to raise his voice over the Piper's words as she attempted to mollify Calypso's long-held disgruntlement with soothing, "It's not really all it's cracked up to be," as Percy shook his head and said, "Cracked up to be? You think how it _sounds_ is actually a positive? School's hell, especially for a demigod".

"But my point is," Leo said loud enough to override Calypso's grumbling, "that all of us, every single one of us, is more than capable of fighting monsters. Not to mention even outside of our little party we have people who can offer help."

"No," Hazel growled, swinging her attention towards Leo. Her eyes were narrowed, the glassiness of tears evaporating and her lip curled in a snarl. Nico had seen such a progression happen before, of Hazel shifting from her usual calm, collected, cordial self into aggressive anger. Protectively aggressive, true, but from the startled and faintly wary expression on Leo's face he didn't know that. How could he? Nico had only seen it himself for the first time little more than two years ago when he'd seen her face the hydra. "That is _not_ going to happen. We are not going to bring anyone else into this." She dragged her gaze around the room. " _No one else will know._ "

The wariness Leo wore spread like a stain throughout the room. Even Frank, who's expression had fluctuated between sorrowful and adoring, appeared to grow faintly unnerved. Hazel's hand grasped onto Nico's wrist as she took a step back towards him, and in her grasp he felt all the fear, the uncertainty, the desperation that she was hiding behind her anger.

Until Will spoke. Then he was distracted once more. "Well, that might be a bit of a problem."

Nico turned slowly towards him. "Why is that?" He said, low and guarded.

Will briefly released his grasp upon Nico's shoulder to scratch a little sheepishly at the back of his head. "I might have messaged Austin and Kayla about everything."

Nico stared and fought not to snarl. _More people – but no, that was largely unavoidable. They'd already seen me anyway. They'd have questions, unavoidable questions._ Slowly, with difficulty, Nico nodded. "Alright. Alright that's – fine. If it's just them –"

"And Reyna."

Nico twitched. "Goddammit, Will."

"Well, it's not like I could have kept quiet to her."

"You fucking could have."

"She was going to come over for a visit next week anyway," Will shrugged, with only the slight tightness to his shoulders indicating his uneasiness. "The only reason she's not here is because she was literally in the middle of a senatorial conference when I messaged her."

"I can't believe you messaged so many people."

"I might have sent word to Thalia, too."

In unison, Nico and Hazel swung their attention to Annabeth who, quite unlike Will, demonstrated not a speck of shame for the looseness of her tongue. She only crossed her arms over her chest and lifted her chin objectionably. Or defensively, Nico wasn't sure. "Just Thalia. She likes you too, you know, Nico. I had to tell her."

"No," Nico struggled to pronounce, his voice barely more than a croak. This was all a disaster. "You didn't. You didn't have to tell anyone."

"If it's any consolation," Percy said, his face wincing with the guilt that Annabeth's lacked, "I asked her not to tell any of her fellow Hunters."

"Oh, well, that's a relief," Hazel grumbled, sarcasm mostly succeeding in masking her rising hysteria. Nico could hear it, though. He wondered if anyone else could. He suspected that Frank at least noticed from the slight tightening of his expression.

"Hey, you kind of sound like Nico when you say that," Leo commented idly.

"I have a theory about that," Will said. "I think he's rubbed off on her."

"Oh, joy."

"Leo."

"Sorry, sorry. More bluntness, less tact, right?" He winked at Annabeth who only shook her head with a half-raised eyebrow.

"This is all going to the shits," Hazel whispered, turning back into Nico so that he doubted anyone else could hear her. "Seriously. What the hell are we going to do?"

Nico wasn't cruel enough to point out that it was _Hazel's_ actions as much as anything, egging Will on that morning, that had been a significant contributor to their situation. He only shook his head. "I don't know."

"Let us help you, that's what."

Nico raised his gaze from Hazel's as she turned to look over her shoulder at Frank. He'd taken a step towards them and _Gods_ , had he always been so tall? Nico had forgotten.

Hazel was shaking her head but Frank continued before she could speak. "I'm not asking for your permission. I'm telling you what's going to happen, whether you like it or not." Franks eyes narrowed, not angrily but with firm stubbornness. "Because I'm telling you now, I at least am not going to leave here having done nothing. Even if you don't let me stay with you, I'm going to do everything I can to help you hunt down these monsters."

"Hear, hear," Percy agreed, a smile spreading across his face.

"Well said, my man," Leo said with a nod. Around him, the rest of the inhabitants of the room nodded their agreement. Nico watched as faces set in determination, into something that was almost eagerness, and felt only an upwelling of defeat within him.

 _Shit. Shit, shit, shit._ He glanced towards Will but couldn't even summon the energy to scowl at him, no more than he could to shrug away the hand that had returned to his shoulder. _Well done, you fucking idiot. You stupid, nosy, persistent, loveable idiot. Gods, I can't_ stand _you._

"If anything," Annabeth was saying, "the more the better. More eyes to look out for danger, to watch one another's backs."

"Do we know what we're up against?" Jason asked, tilting his head curiously towards Nico and Hazel, expression slipping into consideration. "Will told us what you've defeated already."

"And about the Colchian Dragon and Scylla," Percy added. He gave a slight shudder. "Tough luck. Scylla will be a bitch to beat."

"I'm sure your vote of confidence is appreciated by everybody in the room, Percy," Jason said with a grin.

"Cheers, man."

"Lifted my spirits," Leo said. He clapped his hands together, turning expectantly towards Nico and Hazel. "So? What else are we up against? I mean, other than the supposedly indestructible dragon and a sea goddess."

Annabeth replied before Nico had even decided that he wasn't going to. "From what I can recall of Echidna, and from what Will said of those you've already defeated –"

"Solid effort on that, by the way," Percy commented, those around him nodding fervently in agreement.

"- that would make, what, five more children? Adopted children included."

"We're talking…?" Piper trailed off questioningly.

"Obviously those two whose whereabouts you're aware of." Annabeth raised two fingers, counting off the rest of the monsters as she spoke. "I'm guessing Ladon, the Sphinx – the actual sphinx herself, of course – and… what, the giant eagle, right?"

"The Caucasian eagle," Will clarified, nodding. "That's what I counted, too."

"Wait, aren't the giant eagles sort of on our side?" Jason asked with a raised eyebrow. "At New Rome they're the aerial support system."

"Clearly not anymore," Annabeth said with a frown. "We might have to send a message to Reyna to ask about that."

"They've all got little minor monsters hanging around with them too, haven't they?" Calypso asked. "That's what Will said."

"Yeah, apparently," Will said. "Most of them."

"Brilliant. More to go around. Too easy, really," Percy said with a smile that was almost sincere but not enitrely. Nico saw the slightly daunted expression on his face and he wasn't the only one wearing as much.

"Yeah, sure thing. That's, what, five between all of us? That's make it about five between two, right?" Leo asked, doing a quick head count. "Unless Reyna and Thalia turn up –"

"Maybe Kayla and Austin too," Piper reminded him.

"Yeah, maybe those two as well. That's nearly one between three."

"Except that it needs to be Nico or Hazel who strike the last blow," Frank murmured quietly.

Nico flinched. Once more it was in tandem with Hazel. So casually it was said, with such nonchalance. Nico had never been able to view such a defeat, such a _killing,_ with so much casualness. Will's had tightened almost imperceptibly upon his shoulder.

"Right," Jason said, nodding. "So maybe two teams of two, then?"

"Or we could just go together?" Piper suggested. "All of us at once?"

"Depends how fast you want them defeated."

"Which is fast."

"Also depends on how widespread they are."

"Do you guys know where the sphinx and Ladon are? Will said you'd already found the eagle, but what about the rest of them?"

"We'll need to outfit ourselves more fully in armour, with weapons…"

"…have to call work, take some time off…"

"…maybe get in contact with New Rome a little sooner? Have them keep an eye out for the monsters…"

"…demigod contacts…"

"… have to talk to…"

"…do you think that maybe…?"

Back and forth between one another the conversation flew, like fired bullets for their speed. Words and suggestions, questions and answers, conveyed with increasing determination, enthusiasm and confidence. Nico watched, dread in his stomach sinking its teeth in even more strongly alongside his rising sense of defeat. He could see it in Hazel's eyes, in the way she glanced around their group of friends before fastening her gaze upon Frank with evident distress. Then she would glance back to Nico, faint desperation that was already fading into resignation spreading across her face.

She felt it too. The inevitable. The fact that, necessary as it was to leave them to protect them, Nico could do nothing about it. At all. Not if what Frank had said was to be believed.

He glanced up at Will. Not to glare, not to scowl, nor even to accuse, but simply in defeat. To confess in silence rather than words that he knew he was done for. He wasn't happy about it, but he could sense the redundancy in fighting when he saw it. And he heard Will's slightly apologetic, unspoken reply, the apology for distressing Nico but not in the slightest for his actions. It was so typical of Will that Nico almost laughed. Or cried, he wasn't sure which.

Closing his eyes, he dropped his forehead back to the side of Hazel's head. There was nothing else he could do. Three years of avoidance, of attempting to protect his friends, gone up in smokes. And the worst part? The most selfish part?

Nico wasn't happy about it, but he couldn't quite bring himself to regret the birth of such a catastrophe.

* * *

A/N: Please leave a review to let me know what you think! Please, please, please! To the lovely people who do so each chapter, thank you so, so much. Your lovely words are what encourage me to write more xx


	8. Chapter 8 - Searching

**Chapter 8: Searching**

Will managed to snap off one final shot, a final arrow, before the drakons drew too close to bother with long-range anymore. With a spin of his bow, he smacked the end twice onto the ground, _ping_ ing the bowstring from its tautness. Hands grasping onto his Celestial Bronze-reinforced quarterstaff, Will launched himself into the fight.

The remaining trio drakons were no bigger than large dogs. Large, serpentine, heavily-scaled dogs, armoured like Roman legionaries in colours of vibrant blue, vivid turquoise and acid green. Crests of scales stood up starkly around their necks and their jaws stretched wide around long, forked tongues of dark blue that curled between curved needle-like teeth. They swept forwards in slithering undulations, squeals of fury and hatred ringing in piercing wails from their throats. And their eyes…

Will didn't look at their eyes. To do so would mean paralysis, if only temporary, and with just he and Nico to oppose them, they couldn't afford one less pair of hands.

Nico was already upon them almost before Will started his charge. Sword spinning, he twirled in the artful dance that was even more refined, even more elegant and graceful than Will recalled from the past. Nico was a master with his sword. He'd always been a master but now he seemed to live and breathe sword dancing. Will would simply watch him if he could, as Nico leapt and bounded over the monster's backs, as he rolled to his knees, sprung afoot again with a curving slice. He spun in a black shadow, sometimes a literal shadow as his grasping limbs of darkness darted out from him like extra hands, to bat aside, to strike and distract. He was a one-man army.

Will wished he could watch, but maybe another time.

He fell upon the blue drakon's with a grunting swing, snapping the creatures jaw to the side with the force of his striking quarterstaff. The drakon's shriek was momentarily silenced as it stumbled as much as it was possible for a serpent to stumble before it swung back to the attack. _Those damned armoured scales,_ Will grumbled silently. There was barely a dent, barely depressing the smoothness of its scales. _I'll just have to hit harder._

Will struck. He jumped backward to avoid a striking lunge, struck once more, danced to the side. He spun a second later, instinctively, to parry the turquoise drakon's lunging bite, the beast momentarily drawing away from Nico in wariness of his shadows and tuning upon Will instead. Only for Nico, the green drakon felled and bursting into scattering dust, to turn and chase after it. Will turned back to the blue drakon once more, his quarterstaff rising. The serpent unleashed a wailing screech of rage before charging.

It ended quickly after that. It wasn't a difficult battle, with only four drakons happening upon them in the middle of the forest. Will had managed to take down one with the his arrows from a distance before they'd been within biting distance, loosing a quartet of shots – most of which had rebounded off the armoured scales given that he'd passed the hydra arrows on to Kayla – and only the final one punching the monster through its eye socket and crumbling it to dust. The loss of the drakons' brother seemed to awaken their fury all the more.

Which, all things considered, was probably fair enough.

It hadn't been a hard battle, though. Will had barely even worked up a sweat, was hardly breathing heavily. They were small drakons; Thebian, Will would guess from their colouration and the pointed jaggedness of their crests. Dangerous still, of course, but not significantly.

Will lowered his quarterstaff, knocking it twice upon the ground to re-bend it into a bow and slinging it over his shoulder. He turned towards Nico as he too slipped his sword back over his shoulder. His Imperial gold short sword, slightly curved and just a little longer, just slightly narrower, than the Stygian sword crossed in the opposite direction upon his back.

That was something that Will had noticed. Something that he couldn't help but notice. Nico didn't use his Stygian sword, or the black knives that were strapped one to his forearm and the other to the inside of his calf. Not unless he was facing one of Echidna's children.

"What?"

Nico's question, faintly annoyed, drew Will's attention from the sheathed swords at his back. He'd half-turned to glance at him over his shoulder, dark hair falling across his face and a slight frown upon his brow. As seemed to be his habit, he was dressed too cold for the winter weather, in nothing but a hoodie, jeans, heavy boots and the pretty blue scarf he seemed to live in. Will's suggestion that he adorn himself more warmly didn't appear to have any impact. He simply called Will a 'chicken' and told him to stop mother hen-ing him.

Will couldn't deny that those words made him smile, if he would only admit it in secret. What once had exasperated him, even occasionally annoyed him, now only filled him with fondness. The nickname from the past seemed to be filled with warmth and affection despite the exasperation in Nico's tone. Will wondered if it truly was or if he was just projecting.

Shrugging at Nico's question, he fell into step beside him as they began to make their way through the snow-laden forest. It was a chilly morning, the sky greying with what looked to be snow clouds and the towering boreal and southern deciduous trees laden with heaped hats of white and sprinkling wet droplets as their winter burdens melted just slightly. "Just wondering about your sword."

"What about it?" Nico asked, sweeping aside the low-hanging bough of a tree to step through. His eyes scanned their surroundings, on the lookout for other monsters, other potential dangers. Maybe even mortals, for Will suspected he would be just as wary in an encounter with another human as he would a creature stepped right out of mythology.

"Wondering where you got it from," Will clarified. There was no need to specify which sword he referred to; Nico didn't talk about his Stygian sword, almost as though he wanted to forget its very existence for when he didn't expressly need it. Will had heard him speak nothing of it but to say that he practically slept with the weapon as he had since he'd first gone to retrieve it from the abandoned grounds of the Chimaera battle.

Nico glanced towards Will once more with a raised eyebrow. "Why?"

"Just curious," Will said with a shrug. "Imperial gold doesn't exactly grow on trees."

Nico fell silent for a moment, the only sound he made being the slight crunching of his footsteps through the snow and even that Will could barely hear. He seemed practiced in walking silently. "I got it from Persephone," he said finally, nonchalantly, though with a slight question in his tone as though wondering at the relevance of Will's question. If only he knew Will didn't need relevance. He just wanted to talk to him.

"Persephone?"

"My father's wife."

"No shit, your father has a wife?" Will said, smirking.

Nico shot a hooded glance. "Well, given your stupidity over the past few days, I have to question your intelligence."

"Ouch."

"You deserved it."

"From your perspective, maybe."

"Not just mine," Nico said. "Hazel agrees."

"Okay, just you and Hazel, then."

Nico nodded. "Yeah, the two people's opinions you _should_ be considering when you're forcing your company upon them."

Will bit back his smile. Not because he didn't feel the need to cringe slightly for Nico's words – for he did perhaps deserve them, even if Nico's indignation and his own stupidity on the matter was equal if not greater than his own – but because the easy exchange was a welcome relief from Nico's attitude of the previous few days.

He'd been quiet at first. He and Hazel both had been more subdued than Will had ever known them to be. There was resignation in their mutual silence, but more than that there was sorrowful defeat. Sadness and pain, as though the company of their friends, or at least what it entailed, physically hurt them both. It had been enough that, despite knowing and whole-heartedly believing that he'd done right in his actions, Will felt guilty. He hated to see them both so down-hearted. He hated to see _Nico_ like that. Nico had always been a fighter, always objectionable and ready to offer a scowl, a glare, a scathing remark or a blast of sarcasm to an unwary speaker. His attitude had been unnerving, and nothing that Will could say, not even his roundabout apologies, seemed to alleviate it.

Their friends had thrown themselves into their self-appointed quest with a passion. Their readiness to put their lives on hold had almost surprised Will for that was what they truly did – Annabeth made about a dozen phone calls in the space of ten minutes, telling countless anonymous colleagues that she would be out of action with a personal crisis for the foreseeable future. Leo and Calypso had sent their vague and apologetic excuses to Camp Half-Blood and the minions under their direction that ran the factory of Bunker 9, while Frank disappeared briefly to come back with the words "everything is taken care of". Piper had called her manager of the restaurant and basically told him to handle everything until she got back and Jason had loosed a succession of messages far and wide to friends and mentors telling them that he would have to put his studies on hold for the time being 'out of necessity'.

Even Percy, the most flexible out of the lot of them for the fact that he practically drifted between whatever job or hobby took his fancy – and to the grasping requests for employment from each company, so was bafflingly favoured – had made his own fair share of calls. The last everyone had been party to; his little sister's complaints about his absence had been loud enough for the entire room to hear. Will felt guilty about that most of all, as though it had been his fault entirely that the siblings were separated. Everyone knew how much Percy adored his little sister, and vice versa.

Nico and Hazel watched it all with shadowed eyes. Will almost expected them to put up a fight at every second, to attempt to convince their friends as to the uselessness, the stupidity, the danger of their chosen path. They hadn't. Not once. Their mutual silence had been so enduring that uneasy frowns had long been exchanged between the rest of them before any progress on the matter could be made.

That was until Frank disappeared with Hazel for half a day. They returned practically joined at the hip, both puffy-eyed and avoiding one another's gazes but inseparable nonetheless. Hazel had thrown herself with determination back into their search for the exact location of the monsters that pursued her and Nico, scanning news reports, social media and all the satellite images she could get her hands on for a lead. Annabeth seemed to thoroughly approve of her dedication.

But Nico… Nico had been less ready to spring into acceptance. It was one of the primary reasons that he was the first of them all to take himself out to pursue the leads they unearthed. Every day he would head out with the GPS coordinates logged into his phone and shadow travel his way directly from the flat. It was almost a struggle for Will to make sure he hitched a ride along with him. At least Nico didn't complain about anymore. Not out loud, anyway.

They'd developed a system, their party of ten – or thirteen when Kayla, Austin and a very disgruntled-looking Thalia showed up. Will had been heartily grateful it hadn't been him on the receiving end of the apparent-teenager's wrath. Seemingly younger than the rest of them, the Hunter of Artemis had no qualms about giving Nico and Hazel both a tongue lashing before diving into work alongside Annabeth for their mission. It was as simple as that: Thalia arrived, she scolded, then she got to work. Will could admire that in a person.

The rest of them had rented a temporary cabin of sorts on the outskirts of the little town that the children of Hades had taken up residence. Will didn't spend all that much time in it but to notice that it was large enough to hold the entirety of the rest of their party, a two-storey log-cabin that somehow appeared larger on the inside than the outside. It had quickly become swamped beneath computers and gadgets, weapons and armour spread like discarded clothes across every surface, the walls plastered with paper-bound notations and print-out pictures courtesy of Annabeth and her workplace sprawl. It reminded Will of the bedroom-slash-armoury of Nico and Hazel's room.

Annabeth was in control of logistics. She and Piper had set up camp in the cabin, eyes glued to computer screens and phones in hand as they each contacted their respective spider web networks to scrounge the greater US for any mention of the target monsters. Annabeth suggested – rightly, in Will's opinion – that they would most likely be in the north-eastern region given that they were evidently drawn towards Nico and Hazel. The messages and imagery that they already had of the Colchian Dragon and Scylla were suggestive of as much if nothing else. Annabeth swept through the internet, likely hacking her way through every other security-bound data base she could get her hands on, while Piper conducted conference call after conference call with her host of far-flung eyes and ears. She was like that, Piper was. She just seemed to draw loyal followers, and not only for her cooking skills.

Percy and Jason were allocated the search for Scylla, with the combined efforts of Percy's water sensitivity and Jason's flying capacity. Thalia raked the coastline with Frank and Hazel, her tracking senses somehow still useful even when hunting for a sea monster, while Leo and Calypso set about attempting to sneak their latest model of aerial-aquatic-terrestrial ship from Camp Half-Blood. They were due to appear along the distant Vermont coastline that morning.

Inland, Kayla and Austin took their search south, scouring the terrain for any sign of the Colchian Dragon. That left Will and Nico to head north, something that Will suspected Nico was quite satisfied with. There was no particular indication of that satisfaction in his words or expression, except for Will's knowledge of the message he'd received from his Canadian correspondent indicating they'd seen suspected evidence of the monster from on high. Will knew Nico wanted to be the one to find the dragon. It wasn't because he had any particular death wish, thank the gods, nor because he sought glory, but because if anyone was going to face a potentially disastrous threat he would want it to be him.

Nico was simply like that. He always had been. He held little regard for his own safety or wellbeing, seeming to shunt it aside for the sake of others. He was a stupidly noble idiot, and hid that fact behind close-lipped sullenness.

Being outside, away from the tension-inducing determination and efficiency of their friends, seemed to ease Nico. No, perhaps ease was the wrong word. Will hadn't really seen Nico absented of tension since he'd found him nearly a week before. But he seemed less… strained. As though that tension that wound him tightly had lessened. Only slightly, just enough for him to breathe a little.

And just enough for him to break from his silence. To fall back into the largely surly, objectionable self that Will both loved and despaired for at once.

 _Better annoyed and prone to insulting remarks than that silence_ , Will thought, watching the back of Nico's head between the crossed hilts of his swords with affection that he only attempted to hide when Nico was looking towards him. He didn't want to assault him with his love, the love that had never been lost but had been hidden beneath longing, distress, anger and frustration for so long as to be effectively buried alive. Will stood by his words of days before. He did love Nico, even if Nico didn't entirely love him the same way anymore. He could accept that, at least for now. As long as Nico didn't force him away again. That was all he would ask.

"What was Persephone doing with an Imperial gold sword?" Will asked, drawing his attention back to their largely redundant exchange. He'd never been particularly inclined to long silences, preferring to fill them with idle conversation. It was something that Nico had never been terribly fond of so had more often than not been little more than a pair of ears to receive his contemplative words. Those pair of ears probably ignored most of what Will said anyway.

Nico glanced over his shoulder as he was seemingly compulsively inclined to do once more. "Not Persephone exactly. Her Roman counterpart, Proserpina," he clarified.

"Obviously, since it's Imperial gold not Celestial bronze," Will said with a roll of his eyes. "Why didn't you just say Proserpina?"

"We've just been through this. I've decided you're an idiot and I have to dumb everything down for you."

"Ouch again. Jeez, Nico, twice in a row."

"You deserve it."

Will chuckled at the grumble in Nico's tone, barely loud enough to be heard. He sounded like a petulant child rather than a young man of nearly twenty-six years old. Will could almost see the pursing of his lips from behind him.

Reaching forwards, he tugged briefly at the each hilt of the sword. Nico half-turned, batting at his hands with a scowl. "Oi. Stop it."

"Have you ever tried duel wielding your swords before?"

Nico paused in step, raising an eyebrow at Will in a way that very obviously said _"you are a complete idiot"._ "No. Why?"

"'Cause you've got two short swords. That's what they used in the olden days, wasn't it?"

Nico rolled his eyes, the unspoken _"idiot"_ surfacing once more. "Do you have any idea how heavy it would be to hold not just one sword in one hand but one in _each_ hand."

Will shrugged. "No. I don't fight with swords."

"Well, it's hard."

"Have you tried it?"

"I don't need to."

"But have you tried it?"

Nico gave a long-suffering sigh. "No," he said shortly. "I haven't tried it. It would take a lot of practice – unnecessary practice, that I don't have to attempt."

"So basically you mean you lack the coordination to manoeuvre two swords at once?" Will guessed. "You always did suck at piano when we lived at camp."

Nico stared at him for a long moment, face utterly blank but for his hooded eyes nearly hidden behind his overgrown fringe. Then he turned and strode once more through the forest, footsteps crunching in the snow. Will didn't think it was any accident that the bough of the next tree he followed Nico through smacked him in the face.

Far from being affronted, Will actually found it kind of funny. He'd always found Nico's objectionable antics funny. What was wrong with him? Maybe it was simply a resurgence of the past? He was reminded of their earlier exchanges more and more frequently of late. Of the sarcastic remarks, the teasing and jibes that as often as not held little sincerity. More so because Nico demonstrated that same guardedness, that same distancing, that he once had so many years ago. Will hoped to tear down that wall once more, but at least for now he could be content with the return to his old ways. For now and now only.

Anything was better than those dejected, lost, defeated silences.

"Are the drakons supposed to be the offspring of the dragon?" Will wondered aloud.

"We've been through this," Nico said from up ahead without turning. "Maybe. Usually. Historically they were supposed to be."

"Because if they are, you'd expect them to be Lydian drakons rather than Thebian ones. Obviously the Colchian Dragon was from Colchis, which was closest to Lydia out of all of the subspecies of drakon's places of origin. Right?"

"I don't know why you're asking me. Does it even matter?" Nico asked, shooting Will another hooded glance over his shoulder.

"It could matter, because you said that the offspring tend to hang around their forefather. Or mother, or whatever. So if we see any Lydian drakons as opposed to Thebian, Maeonian or Aethiopian ones, then that would suggest we're getting close, right?"

"I suppose."

"I hope we don't come across any Maeonian drakons. They're supposed to spit acid from their mouths or something, aren't they?"

"As opposed to Lydian drakons who breathe fire?" Nico replied.

Will slowed his step, frowning at the back of Nico's head as he ducked beneath another overhanging tree. "Are you trying to make me feel worse about the situation?"

"Not at all. I'm simply preparing you for the possibility."

The reply Will made to utter was cut off abruptly by a loud, echoing screech in the distance. Pausing in step, Will's attention snapped in the direction of the resounding wail. It was far off, nearly inaudible for its range, yet still loud enough to be heard. "Is that…?"

Nico's barely perceptible nod was visible from his periphery. He too was turned roughly northwest in the direction of the sound. "I would guess," he murmured.

Will couldn't see it. Of course he couldn't, not through the trees or over the mounds of the undulating countryside, the jagged teeth of rocks that jabbed blackly from the surrounding whiteness and the occasional rotting log so covered in powdered snow that they could have very easily been lurking serpents. But the very memory of the echo was enough that Will could almost see the monster itself through the midmorning light.

Nico took a step in the direction of the sound, and Will didn't even realise he was moving until he made a lunge for him and grabbed onto his arm. Nico paused, slowly turning his regard upon Will. "What?"

"Tell me you're not going to go charging after the dragon," Will said with little confidence in validation.

Nico raised an eyebrow. "Why would I tell you that? Do you want me to lie to you?"

"What happened to going as a group? To waiting for backup?"

Nico narrowed his eyes. "You suggest that we just leave now? Go back to the flat and herd everyone together before coming back?"

"That is exactly what I'm suggesting," Will nodded. "Unless… can you even shadow travel that many people at once?"

"You're asking entirely the wrong questions," Nico muttered, a scowl settling upon his face. "And of course I can."

"Of course you can?"

"Almost certainly."

"Almost?"

"Stop parroting me." Nico turned more fully towards Will, shaking Will's hand from him to cross his arms over his chest. "Look, we'll go and find the dragon and if it descends into a fight it happens. Or – wait, no, you stay here."

He made to turn from Will, but Will darted out his hand once more to hold him back. "Um, no, that's not how this works."

"I've done this sort of thing before," Nico said, not even bothering to turn towards Will as he wriggled in an attempt to be free of his grasp. Will only tightened his fingers further this time.

"Yeah," he said, stepping around Nico so that he stood directly in his path. "And you said that some of those fights lasted for days." _And you likely nearly killed countless times in each one_ , Will continued silently to himself. Nico and Hazel had mentioned in the briefest possible terms how they had turned upon, encountered, or been caught up by each of the Echidna's children already. How they had used their combined hereditary gifts and acquired talents – shadows and magic alongside their Stygian weapons – to defeat them.

Will wasn't the only one who had been left a little awestruck, even by just the simplistic and emotionless explanations they'd recounted. He hadn't been the only one, nor the sole person to glance at their fellows with thinly veiled horror and a blessing of _"thank the Gods they're still alive"_.

"Look, we can go and check it out," Will reasoned before Nico could voice further dispute. "Just to see where it is. Then we'll go back to your flat, grab everyone, and come straight back."

"In that time it could have moved again," Nico protested. "Or set itself up a nest. You know dragons fortify their nests."

"We'll be quick."

"You can't be that quick."

"You're not fighting the dragon, Nico."

"What, you think you can stop me?"

"If I have to."

"Then I'll just dump you somewhere else first."

Will tightened his hold upon Nico's arm until his grasp must have been painful. He didn't care. "You wouldn't dare," he said lowly, though Nico's expression suggested he was more than inclined to attempt.

Whatever he was going to say in reply – if he was going to reply – was cut off by another cry. Or more correctly an exclamation. A different kind of exclamation this time, though still from the same direction as that previous. Closer, and overhead.

Will drew his gaze towards the sky in the same instant that Nico did. For a moment there was nothing visible but the gradually darkening clouds. Then another cry, the whinny of a horse, rung through the air and a pegasus swept into view.

It was glowingly white, the long flight feathers fading into pink, purple and blue shades. Feathered hooves galloped on the air as though it was running rather than flying upon the wind, and it tossed its arching neck to white the wind-swept lengths of its mane in enthusiasm for its descent.

The pegasus swung past overhead, disappearing briefly before reappearing lower. Then lower, and lower still, zigzagging back and forth until finally in a heavy, thumping landing it ploughed a runnel into the snow before them. It was a giant of a beast, could likely pull a chariot by itself with the ease of a child tugging a go-cart. It dwarfed the rider upon its back.

Will turned towards the new arrival with a spreading smile. He didn't release his hold on Nico, for at the moment it was likely that Nico would take off or do something stupid if he did, but that didn't stop him from taking a step towards the young woman swinging herself down from her winged horse with practiced ease. He just dragged Nico after him.

"Reyna! It's been a while."

* * *

Reyna Ramírez-Arellano looked different. Nico had expected her to look different, but she looked different in a way that he hadn't so expected. The reason for that largely lay in the fact that she looked entirely normal.

More precisely, she wore not a hint of Roman attire upon her person.

Dressed in a thick, wool-lined parka, similarly wool-lined boots halfway up her calves over her jeans, nothing but the sword dangling for the saddle of the pegasus beside her suggested she was a demigod. She wasn't even wearing a hint of the praetor-purple. Evidently Will's words as to her stepping down from her praetor-ship were valid.

Reyna strode through the snow towards Nico and Will, gloved hands swinging at her side. Her face was deceptively expressionless, strewn with spider webs of wind-tossed hair that had escaped her braid. At Will's words, she spared him a moment's notice to nod, to even offer a small smile, before she affixed her attention back onto Nico.

Nico was at a loss. His thoughts, until seconds before trained unwaveringly upon the rapidly approaching battle with the Colchian Dragon, had been turned loose from their tracks and jumbled like scrambled eggs. He'd known she was coming, had expected it even, perhaps even earlier than she had arrived. But that didn't leave him prepared for the confrontation.

He and Reyna had always had a strange and somewhat complicated relationship. Nico had never quite been certain what to classify it as, for in many ways he didn't know her all that well, wasn't familiar with the array of her likes and dislikes, her hobbies and tastes, as he would any of his other friends. But on the other hand, Reyna was special. They shared a bond that was… different. Deeper in many ways, on almost a primal level. They were each vastly different people, different in their priorities and what drove them, but they shared a similar history of past trauma, of loneliness and the feeling of ostracism that had bound them in an entirely different way. It made Nico feel comfortable with her as he was with no one else in the world with the exception of Will. It had made fleeing without leaving her a single world all the harder.

Reyna didn't speak as she strode towards to him. She didn't utter a word as she stopped barely a foot away, back straight and peering down at him. Always down, for no matter how much Nico grew Reyna had always been taller than him. She was one of the tallest woman Nico had ever met and seemed to feel naught but satisfaction for that fact.

They stared at one another unblinkingly. Nico felt like he should speak, for the first time in so long actually wanting to speak, to offer an apology or a greeting or a sarcastic comment of some sort. Anything. But the scrambling of his thoughts, almost as bad as when he'd first confronted Will, prevented such words from formulating, from channelling all that he wanted to express into an explanation and leaving Nico mute and staring.

Reyna didn't speak either. Not at first, anyway. She didn't do anything, simply stared, until in a motion so fast that Nico didn't have time to do more than flinch she delivered him a jarring cuff to the side of his head.

"Ow –"

"Nico di Angelo, where the hell have you been?"

Hand pressed against his ringing ear, Nico winced as he tried to lift his gaze back to Reyna's. It was difficult, the heat of her stare almost visible in a ruddy cloud around her head. The blankness of her expression had faded into a smouldering glare, her lip curling enough to reveal her teeth. She looked like an angry dog snarling at a foolish pup.

"I –" Nico attempted.

"No Iris messages? Not even a phone call or a voicemail? Not a second to stop by and explain where you were going, or to tell me that you weren't dead?" Reyna's eyes narrowed further. "I would have settled for a handwritten letter if nothing else."

"Reyna, I –"

"Hunting monsters, is it? Apparently? You thought it was a good idea to pit yourself, just you and your sister, against possibly the most dangerous monsters in the world?" She shook her head. "Are you an idiot?"

"You don't –"

"Probably nearly got yourself killed a dozen times or more." Reyna paused to make a deliberate kick in the snow at her side as though the urge to strike something was too great to ignore. "Where do you get your ideas from, hm? What goes on in that head of yours that would convince you that the only way to go about this situation was to do it by yourself? If you'd explained it to me then I would have been able to help you get around your issue!"

"I couldn't because –"

"If it's any consolation," Will interrupted him, just as easily as Reyna had been doing. His voice was deceptively mild. "He didn't tell me anything either. Pure chance that I stumbled upon him at all."

Reyna glanced at him before turning slowly back towards Nico. She was doing her mother dog impression again, her snarl curling more pronouncedly. Nico couldn't help but shift uncomfortably before it. She seemed to have redoubled in her anger, even when she _must_ have known that Will, that everybody else, was as uninformed as she had been. "Well, that's just the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

"Thank you. I'm glad my opinion on the matter is justified," Will said. He had the audacity to actually smile, as if he truly was happy with the situation.

"I didn't have a choice," Nico reattempted, speaking hastily in an effort to convey his words before either one of them overrode him once more. "You might say that I should have waited an that it would have been better if I'd asked for help, but I couldn't –"

"Didn't have a choice?" Reyna's eyebrows arched. "Didn't have a _choice_? Nico, you had a choice. You always have a choice. You just chose to act the fool, to think that it would be easier to do it alone than to rely upon the support of those who would die to help you."

"Which is the very reason I couldn't ask anyone," Nico exclaimed, finding himself just short of desperate. He was repeating himself again, undertaking the same argumentative exchange that he had on numerous occasions before both with himself and with his friends in the past few days. _Probably because I am_ , he thought. "I don't _want_ to rely on other people who could get killed for my actions."

"And that's why you're an complete idiot," Reyna finished, nodding curtly. "As a warrior, you have to learn to rely upon those around you. You have comrades in arms as much as you have friends, comrades who are capable of fighting. You need to use that, to use _us_."

"Oh, like you're so inclined to doing?" Nico asked sharply. Perhaps a little more sharply than he'd intended

It was like a pin popped into a balloon. Just like that Reyna deflated, and Nico immediately regretted his words. If there was one thing that he and Reyna shared, it was their trust issues. They'd both survived a childhood with minimal support from others, and that left its mark. It was cruel of him, accidental as it was, to bring up such a fact.

Even so, Nico couldn't quite bring himself to regret speaking as he had for the quelling of Reyna's anger. Not when she'd been just as vicious in turn. With a heavy sigh, Reyna dropped her eyes to her feet for a moment and nodded. "Yeah, I guess we do have that common, don't we? Not that I don't try to be otherwise, but…" She shook her head. "There's precious few people in the world that I actually trust."

Raising her gaze towards Nico's, he saw the profound relief that had been hidden behind her flat anger, buried beneath her hard, scolding mask. She gave a small smile. "You just happen to be one of them, Nico."

Nico felt his throat tighten with emotion and struggled to swallow. For once, he was barely even aware of Will's presence at his side, so consumed was he by his attentiveness to Reyna. A wave of guilt welled within him, different to any he'd felt so far and reminiscent if at all to that he'd felt for Will in his outburst of mournful anger and accusation. _I shouldn't have done that to her…_

Before he could speak, however, before he could apologise or even consider patching up the wound he'd evidently afflicted her with, Reyna stepped forwards and engulfed him in a hug. Quickly and crushingly, arms wrapping around him and squeezing him tightly. Nico felt nearly smothered by the shoulder of her parka as she wrapped him in a tight embrace. She heaved a gushing sigh. "Just don't worry me like that again, _hermanito_."

A sound Nico didn't immediately realise came from himself caught in his throat. It was almost a whimper, feeble and catching. He was suddenly very glad for the crushing weight of Reyna's embrace, as uncomfortable as he still found such contact. It was happening more and more often over the last few days, from casual touches to friendly claps on the shoulder to Will's near constant hold as though he feared Nico would vanish if he released him for too long.

This was different, though. This was Reyna, and Reyna wasn't the sort of person to offer hugs lightly. Nor was she the type of person to refer to another as 'little brother' without whole-heartedly feeling it. She'd never called him that before; Nico didn't even know she felt that way for him. She'd always been a sort of elder sister to him, strangely protective in a way that was different to that of his other friends, but never…

The emotion that caught in Nico's throat was almost painful, expanding from his chest and choking forth. He'd undergone so much of that over the past days, so much confusion, had been assaulted by such a riot of emotions that battered away at him for primary attention, that he was more than familiar enough with it to know from where the feelings for Reyna came. Guilt, sadness, shame, longing, affection… and perhaps just a little bit of love, even if it was of a different kind to the one that Will had spoken of. It was exhausting and frustrating, ridiculous because Nico had trained himself to overlook such emotions, to ignore them, to trap them beneath a lid and disregard them as inconsequential. He hadn't thought himself even capable of feeling so much anymore. Clearly he'd been wrong.

Nico slowly wrapped his arms back around Reyna just as tightly.

The surfacing from such an intense reunion, different entirely to any that Nico had undergone so far, was exhausting. Reyna drew away from him, a slight sniffing and her rapid blinking the only thing to betray that she felt as emotional as Nico found himself. Gods was he tired of being afflicted with such feelings. She took a step backwards and, with the confidence and resilience of a praetor, even if she was only an ex-leader, steadied herself. It was Will she spoke to first, however, Will who had been watching like a spectator from the sidelines with the faintest softness to his features. Nico had to shake his head at that; how Will managed to adopt such an expression without seeming like a complete idiot was beyond him. He actually looked like only half a clown.

"Sorry it took me so long to get here," Reyna said with another sniff. "Trust me, I would have come sooner if I could have in anyway possible extricated myself from Camp." She shook her head. "You have no idea the paperwork and pedantic nattering the senators can push upon you when you're trying to relinquish your praetor-ship."

"I'm sure I don't," Will said, waving his hand to disregard the apology. "But no worries. You're here now. Just in time, I'd say, too."

Reyna nodded, glancing back towards Nico to include him more fully in the conversation. Thankfully, he'd composed himself enough by that stage. "The Colchian Dragon, right?"

Nico nodded, though it was Will who answered. "Yeah. We just heard something that we're assuming was it, but…"

"It was," Reyna supplied. She made a gesture towards the giant pegasus behind her. Nico recognised it as the beast Camp Half-Blood had gifted her nearly five years ago. "Sergeant and I swung by on our way over. We arrived in town – what's its name? Silver-something?"

"Silverwater," Will offered.

"Right. We just arrived and I touched base with Annabeth. She said you two were headed up this way so I figured I'd take myself up to meet you."

"You could have sent us a message," Will said, flicking at the phone in his pocket indicatively. "We could have come to meet you somewhere."

Reyna scrunched her nose. "I don't have a phone."

Will raised his eyebrows before giving a bark of laughter. Even Nico had to shake his head in fond exasperation of that. "You always were a bit backwards in that regard," he murmured.

"Hey." Reyna turned towards him with a begrudging smile of her own. "Just because you've taken to using computers and gadgets so easily –"

"Gadgets? Really?"

"- doesn't mean that I have to. I've never been inclined and I haven't needed to before. Besides, it's dangerous to use phones."

"Which is why we use Leo's models," Nico pointed out.

"You could have sent us an Iris-message," Will said. "Really, you didn't need to come all the way up here."

Reyna brushed aside the suggestion. "It's no trouble. It was hardly much of a trip. Sergeant's the fastest of his brood."

"Probably because he's so fucking huge," Nico muttered.

"Yeah, probably," Reyna said in acknowledgement. "But anyway, as I was saying…" She paused to collect herself before continuing. "Yes, I heard the dragon when I was flying up. I swung by overhead of it to take a look, just to be sure of what it was."

Nico's breath released in a hiss. He'd been momentarily distracted from his consideration of the Colchian dragon by Reyna's arrival, but her words and the suggestion that she'd gone so close to endangering herself served to revamp his focus. Or his concern, more correctly. Because it was definitely concern that was rising within him now.

"Why did you do that?" He demanded. "That was really stupidly reckless to go so close to it."

"Funny that you'd consider it dangerous to go anywhere near the dragon without support," Will murmured just loud enough to be heard.

Nico shot him a glare. "Shut up, Will. You're not helping."

"That's good, because I wasn't trying to." Will deliberately turned his attention towards Reyna. "Please try and cow some sense into him because he doesn't listen to my rationalisation. He seems to think that it's a good idea to charge headlong towards the dragon without any additional support."

"Foolish," Reyna agreed instantly, almost before Will finished speaking. She drew her gaze towards Nico. "Foolish and, as you accused me of being, reckless. There is no way me – or Will, for that matter – are going to allow you to do something so stupid and dangerous." Will nodded his head in fervent agreement.

Nico scowled. He didn't know who he was more frustrated with in that moment, Will, who was eternally persistent with his ridiculous overprotectiveness, or Reyna, who had appeared out of nowhere and was attempting to abruptly afflict the same upon him. They were both equally vexing, and whatever upwelling of sorrowful emotion may have arisen within him previously now slipped from its golden pedestal into sheepish disrepute. "You're going to forcibly try to stop me from going?" Nico fastened an accusing glare upon Will. _He_ at least should understand, after how many times Nico had attempted to explain the situation to him. "You said you wouldn't do that."

"I said I wouldn't stop you from fighting the monsters –"

"Which you are!"

"- so long as it is done in the safest way possible when facing dragons and angry creatures with Echidna's compulsive order driving them into a vengeful fury."

"Remind me to ask you some questions about that," Reyna murmured idly.

"It'll take too much time to go back. Time that we've already wasted," Nico persisted. "The dragon could be making a nest by now –"

"It hasn't."

Nico stuttered off and turned his gaze towards Reyna. "What?"

Reyna nodded. "Yeah, it looked pretty much set up camp from what I saw but no beginnings of a nest yet."

"You've got to be kidding me…"

"Wonderful," Will said with an overly bright smile. He was doing that more of late, gradually yet visibly enough that Nico noticed the change. He was generally relieved to see the resurgence of the Will he remembered and fondly loathed. Except now. "Then there's really no need to hurry."

"Well, reputedly the Colchian Dragon can build a nest pretty quickly," Reyna pointed out. "They can spend as little as a day in one place."

"Since when do you know so much about Greek history and monsters?" Will asked.

"I read." Reyna replied. "Besides, there's a fair bit of it embedded in Roman lore."

"Huh. Go figure."

"Yeah, Annabeth got me onto it years ago. Who'd have thought it would come in handy after all this time?"

"That's the brains trust for you."

Nico glanced between Will and Reyna as they seemed to deliberately ignore him for favour of exchanging pointless remarks. Scowling even more fiercely, he folded his arms across his chest. "Sometime today would be nice."

Will glanced towards him with a slight broadening of his smile once more. "So you agree we're leaving?"

"Well, _I'd_ like to –"

"Yes, we know, you'd like to go towards the incredibly dangerous monster with nothing but your swords," Will nodded, as though he'd heard it all before.

Nico felt his scowl deepen further. "Don't belittle me."

"I'm not belittling you."

"Yes, you are. Stop it."

Will smiled. "Only when you admit defeat, and that you deserve to be spoken down to when you're acting like an idiot."

Nico rolled his eyes. "I thought that out of the two of us, we'd decided it was you who was the idiot?"

"Oh, have you actually decided?" Reyna asked curiously, a slight smile of her own touching her lips.

Will shrugged. "Not that I'm aware of."

"Do let me know for future reference, won't you?"

"You'd be one of the first."

"I'm flattered."

"So you should be."

" _Enough_ ," Nico broke in, his frustration getting the better of him. They were definitely doing it on purpose now. "If you two aren't going to shut up and get a move on then I'm just leaving without you."

Nico had no intention of doing so, especially with the dragon so nearby, but he drew a tendril of shadow from the ground for emphasis of his frustration. Anything to simply get them moving.

Will and Reyna both lunged for him so quickly and frantically he flinched and started backwards a step. The simultaneous locking of hands upon each of his arms nearly jerked him from his feet. Will face had tightened into an expression of momentary panic, the same one Nico had noticed upon several occasions and always felt guilty for eliciting before Will managed to smother it, while Reyna wore a frown of fierce determination that made him suspect her capable of never letting him go. And likely crushing the bones in his arm somewhere in the process.

"Okay," she said, her voice low in a way that put Nico in mind of how one might talk to a flighty dog. "Okay."

"We'll go. Right now," Will said in a similar tone.

Nico glanced between the two of them. Were they teasing him? They most definitely were belittling him, but he wasn't entirely sure if it was though instinctive condescension or jest. For once, however, he let it slide because dammit _,_ he wanted to _leave._

"Fine," he said with a nod, and with an infinitesimal twitch of his fingers urged further tendrils of darkness to rise into his grasp. "Hope you don't mind shadow travelling, Reyna."

"Can you take Sergeant with us?" She asked, clicking her tongue towards the pegasus and reaching out a hand to drawn him towards her. "I can fly back if it would be too much, but –"

"Of course I can," Nico assured her. He was almost completely certain he could, too.

"You sure you can manage carrying all four of us?" Will asked, his usual pre-travel question rising entirely expectedly.

Nico glanced towards him. It was annoying that he asked, true, and Nico was more than a little frustrated still at the turn of events of the afternoon, but he loved him for it. He wouldn't admit it aloud, and certainly not now _,_ but he did.

He nodded with the feigned extra per cent of confidence that he always posed. "Yeah. I'm fine."

"Okay, then," Will replied, his tone as wary and slightly sceptical as always. "If you're sure."

Nico didn't reply to that. It wasn't necessary. With a swirl of his hands, waiting only long enough for Reyna to loop an arm around Sergeant's neck, he drew them into the shadows. The glaring whiteness of their surrounding disappeared into darkness.


	9. Chapter 9 - Fighting

A/N: Thank you again, **LittleBrawley** , for your reviews. They're always so encouraging; it's things that that which keep me writing! I hope the dragon fight lives up to your expectations :D

* * *

 **Chapter 9: Fighting**

When Will, Nico and Reyna arrived at the cabin, they paused on the threshold only long enough for Reyna to tell Sergeant to wait outside. In that moment Jason and Percy arrived. Arrived with a crash from on high, too, with a crash into a snow pile that managed to spray Will even from ten feet away. Far from travelling like a _normal_ person, they had apparently resorted to air travel. Will hadn't even known that Jason could hold Percy when he flew, but the apparent ease with which they managed that flight suggested they'd done so before.

Such trivial thoughts quickly vanished from his mind, however, as he saw the identical expressions on their faces. Nico was immediately striding towards them with a dark shadow of concern crossing his face. "What happened?"

"Scylla happened," Percy ground out tensely. "We found her but… she started kicking up a fuss when she saw Leo and Calypso pull into the coast with their ship."

"Are they alright?" Will asked anxiously, stepping up to Nico's side.

Jason hurried to nod his reassurance. "So far. They managed pull out a little bit into deeper waters and Scylla doesn't seem inclined to chase them. She's taken up a sentinel post on the shore."

"But we found her," Percy repeated emphatically. "And quite honestly, I really think we should do something about her. I mean, _now._ As soon as possible."

"She seems kind of pissed off," Jason added.

"They all do," Nico said, frowning in what Will perceived as worry more than anger. "They're always angry. All of them. She's probably caught Hazel's scent."

"Or yours," Will suggested. "She's hunting you too."

Nico shook his head. "Hazel's closer. She was down by the coast so… is she here? Where is Hazel?" Abruptly turning, Nico strode towards the cabin, leaving the rest of them blinking in his wake. Will hastened to follow after him, barely aware of Percy and Jason's briefly murmured greetings to Reyna behind him.

Inside, Nico and Hazel were already conversing furiously halfway across the living room. Not angrily, but with a definite sense of urgency. Only, they did so entirely without words. Will didn't quite understand how they managed that, but it was very clearly a conversation between the two of them and neither of them opened their mouths. In the warm, wooden interior of the cabin, fireplace crackling sedately in the hearth, it was absolutely silent. Annabeth had risen from her seat before her computer, Piper lowering her phone from her ear and Frank paused in the act of what had evidently been following Hazel across the room to meet Nico at his entrance.

Annabeth turned at Will's entry, drifting immediately past Will to Percy at his shoulder. "What happened?"

"I think we need to act. Now," Percy said, stepping to her side and crossing his arms across his chest. "We found Scylla. She's pissed off."

"That's a good thing though, isn't it?" Piper asked from across the room, slipping her phone into her pocket.

"What, that she's pissed off?" Jason asked, skirting around Will to move towards her. "No, I wouldn't say it is."

"I meant that you've found her."

"Yeah, but it means that we'll have to move pretty fast," Percy said. "Angry sea goddess on the shores of a mortal town? Not good."

"It's near a town?" Annabeth asked, frowning.

"Yeah, a little place called Oaksmead," Percy replied. "No idea why, 'cause I didn't see a single oak tree anywhere."

"It was probably because of the marble statue in the town centre," Jason suggested. "Did you see it?"

"No, I didn't."

"Well, it was an oak tree."

"No shit."

"Where's Thalia?" Annabeth asked, snapping Percy and Jason from their exchange. "She'd be in the town, wouldn't she?"

Percy nodded. "Probably trying to convince people not to go swimming."

"Not sure how well she'd do with that," Jason said with a frown. "She does look like a teenager after all."

"Not to mention that mortals have no clue in these kind of situations," Percy agreed.

"That too."

"Then…" Annabeth glanced over her shoulder towards Nico and Hazel who, as though aware of her attention, turned in synchrony towards her. "We should go?"

"There might be a bit of a problem with that," Hazel said quietly. "Or not a problem but… we might have to reconsider out circumstances."

"How so?"

"The Colchian Dragon's not an hour north of here," Reyna said, stepping further into the room with a nod of greeting towards Annabeth. "It hasn't made a nest yet, but it's kicking up a bit of a fuss. I'd guess that, just like you said with Scylla, Nico, it's probably caught your scent."

"That's not good," Piper said with a frown, slowly crossing the room as she folded her arms. "Two monsters at once? So what, do we split forces?"

"That would be dangerous, wouldn't it?" Frank spoke up. He'd moved to position himself at Hazel's shoulder, just as Will realised he himself had done with Nico. Unconsciously at that. "The more who face the monster the better chance we have of no one getting hurt."

"Then I guess it's a good thing there's so many of us," Percy said, though he looked worried even for his suggestion.

Annabeth was nodding, however. "No, it's not ideal. But we can work with this. It wouldn't do to leave them both running rampart at the same time so… we might be able to manage." Counting off on her fingers, she seemed to make a quick calculation in her head before nodding decisively. "Alright, here's what I think we should do. Hazel, you head towards Scylla. Frank, Percy and I will go with you and meet up with Thalia, and we've already got Leo and Calypso down there with their ship so that would make sense."

Hazel stared at her wide-eyed, fearful, and Will didn't think for a second that it was fear for herself. Hazel was alike to Nico in more than one regard, and one of the most noticeable ways was that she didn't want those around her getting involved. At all, it would seem; the stubborn children of Hades… Will wondered if it was a family trait. "Annabeth," she began

"Nico will go up to the Colchian Dragon," Annabeth continued, cutting Hazel off before she could object further. "Nico, Will, Jason, Piper and Reyna. Send a call down to Kayla and Austin and have them get back here as soon as possible."

"Annabeth," Nico said in his quiet murmur, face a muted mirror of Hazel's. "I don't think –"

"Nico, don't try and tell us not to get involved," Percy interrupted him. Stepping towards him, he clasped a hand onto Nico's shoulder. "We're all in this together now, right? And yeah, it's a shit that we'll have to try and work things out and split everyone, but we have to. And we can work this out."

"We shouldn't have to 'work this out'," Nico said, shaking his head and dropping his frowning gaze to the ground.

"We shouldn't have to drag you all into this along with us," Hazel agreed.

Will closed his eyes briefly, schooling himself into calm. _Not again. Gods, they're persistent with this_. Before he could reply, however, Piper spoke up. "You're not dragging us anywhere, Hazel, Nico." She crossed the room towards them and affixed them each with a stare that was reminiscent of that she used with her Charmspeak though without the compulsive magic. "You couldn't force us to if we didn't want to. Not even if you tried."

"Just like you can't stop us from helping you just as much," Jason added.

Nico made as if to protest once more, that objectionable shadow darkening his expression again, and Will hastened to cut him off. "Nico, the longer we argue the longer it will take for us to go. Which means the monsters will have longer to move and make a mess of things."

"Not to mention that Leo and Calypso are still out on the water in their boat," Percy added.

Nico visibly flinched twice, one right after the other in a show of discomfort that Will was sure he hadn't meant to give. He was certain that it was only because he watched him so intently that Will noticed the strain tightening his face, the need to protect his friends _now_ battling against the desperate urge to face the monsters and get them out of the way as soon as possible.

Annabeth made up his mind for him. Will hadn't even seen her pull out her phone out of her pocket but she glanced up from it with a finger raised as if to silence the room. "I've just sent a message to Kayla and Austin to get back here as fast as possible, and one to Thalia telling her we're on our way." She glanced towards Hazel. "Do you think you can shadow travel us all? I didn't think it was likely given that it's not your specific talent but…"

Hazel hesitated for a moment, sparing a sidelong glance towards Nico. Whether out of uncertainty for her abilities – for Hazel was about as practiced in shadow travel as Nico was with his occasional conjuring of jewels – or her continued disinclination for the situation at large Will wasn't sure. "I don't – I'm not sure. I could try three, maybe four, but I'm honestly not sure. I'm not too great at shadow travelling."

"I could just jet boat Annabeth and me down the nearest waterway," Percy offered. "I've gotten better at water travel lately. We could even manage the sewage system if we had to. It's not exactly a challenge to keep the crap off." Percy glanced at Annabeth who, to her credit, didn't even bat an eyelid at the suggestion of filth immersion. "Might be better than shadow travelling everyone."

"Then it would just be me," Frank said, nodding and turning more fully towards Hazel. "If you think you can manage that."

Hazel hesitated once more before nodding slowly herself. "I think so. I mean, I _think_ so."

"I could just take you," Nico said quietly, concern touching his face as he peered at his sister.

Before Hazel could reply, Annabeth, who had very much taken charge of the situation, shook her head. Much to Will's relief, for he felt he would have jumped in had she not done so herself, she immediately dissuaded him. "That's a lot of shadow travel and moving a lot of people in a short period of time. You'd have to take everyone else to the dragon too."

"It's not a problem," Nico replied shortly.

"Yes it is," Will murmured, leaning towards Nico even though he knew that everyone else would be able to hear him. "You'll pass out after doing that much travelling."

"I'm not a feeble little princess, Will," Nico muttered in reply, shooting him half a glare. "And I'm not as incompetent as I was when I was younger either."

Before Will could argue that he'd likely never been incompetent in his entire life and why did he have to twist Will's words, Annabeth was shaking her head once more. "No, Nico. I think Will's right. Besides, just as with Hazel, the more strength you have the better. _And,_ " she raised her voice as Nico opened his mouth to speak, effectively cutting him off before he began, "it might be needed later in the fight, if you have to get someone out of there fast."

Nico seemed like he was going to argue for a moment longer before be very deliberately closed his mouth, dropping his chin to give a brief nod. Annabeth gave a small, satisfied smile and drew her gaze around the room to everyone. "Alright then, I think that's all set. Gear up, everyone!"

Like the gunshot fired to start a race, everyone flowed into action. Only Reyna stood still in the middle of the sudden movement, and only long enough for Piper to beckon her over to one of the bedrooms with the words "We have some spare leathers in here that might fit you".

Will called towards Annabeth that he'd be back in a moment before turning and heading out of the cabin. He didn't have a room in the cabin himself, despite a free bed being available, declining to sleep anywhere but at Nico and Hazel's flat. He and Frank were equally insistent of the fact. He wouldn't have it any other way, and was only now just slightly regretting the fact that he didn't keep his second quiver and armour acquired courtesy of Leo in the cabin.

Nico had already left after another brief and silent conversation with Hazel. He strode through the front door with his head bowed, already threading shadows through his fingers in what was clearly the intention of making a quick jump. Will had to break into a run to catch up to him, bursting through the door and snatching into Nico's hand with a hasty, "Stop, stop, stop, _stop_ ".

Nico didn't pause in his strides, only glancing over his shoulder as he walked in mild irritation. He didn't release his shadows either. "What?"

"Walk, maybe?"

Nico didn't even have to ask for clarification of what Will was referring to. He shook his head shortly. "It would take too long. There and back again, a quick jump. You can come if you want."

" _No_ shadow travelling," Will persisted. "You'll already have to do enough in a couple of minutes."

"Will, it's too –"

"Slow, I know," Will nodded. Then he locked his fingers into Nico's and, leaping into gear, took off at a sprint. "Then we'll run."

Whether Nico didn't have the breath or the care to reply, Will didn't know. At least this time, however, he abided by Will's request. Their feet left ringing steps on the ice-slick road in their wake as they tore down the street, already disappearing down the next block before the echoes had faded.

* * *

 _Oh crap. Too many_.

It was the first thought that crossed Nico's mind when he landed with his six companions half a mile from Reyna's coordinates. He had to close his eyes for a moment to avoid falling prey to the dizziness that threatened to tumble him from his feet.

Nico had grown better at shadow travelling. He knew he had. He could travel further, carry more, and do so more frequently now than he had even been able to when he was younger. But travelling Reyna and her horse back to Silverwater? And then travelling the seven of them nearly fifty miles back into the heart of the national park?

The dizziness would likely only last briefly but… he might have been exaggerating his capabilities just a little bit. The more individuals carried was a far more influential factor than the distance travelled, more than the size of the individuals or even the frequency of that travel. It would pass, for that kind of tiredness wasn't quite profound just yet, but it was still frustrating.

Will's hand – because of course it was Will's hand – squeezed his wrist and Nico blinked his eyes open to glance towards him. Concern that he barely even attempted to hide tightened Will's face, settling in his Wrong Frown once more. Nico made an attempt to actually smile, struggled to alleviate his concern despite the combined forces of his sudden bout of weariness and the mounting apprehension, the fear, the nausea growing within him that was becoming increasingly difficult to thrust aside. Will didn't look convinced by his attempt, but didn't say anything.

Turning towards the circle of demigods around him, outfitted in winter jackets over armoured vests and bracers, boots shucked over greaves, Nico met each of their eyes in turn. They replied with varying expressions of readiness as hands reached to unsheathe swords and daggers, to heft spears and unsling bows from shoulders. The air of readiness hung around them in a thick cloud.

Nico turned to Reyna, blinking away the edges of fuzziness from his vision. "Shall we? Would you like to do the honours or…?"

Reyna nodded. "Makes sense I'd take the lead seeing as I'm the one who knows where we're going." Turning, scanning around herself briefly to get her bearings, she nodded once more to herself and set of at a quick step. Nico strode after her, falling in step at her side as he drew his Stygian sword in readiness. The rest of their party fell into step behind them.

Nico wasn't happy. He wasn't happy at all that there were so many of his friends accompanying him. But then he wouldn't have been in the slightest bit eased had there been only one or two. In short, Nico didn't want _anyone_ coming along. It might be more dangerous for himself had lacked the support, might take days for him to actually defeat the Colchian Dragon if he managed at all, but it would be better than risking his friends. Just the thought, just the notion, the possibility... It was nauseating.

As had happened so often since his friends had bombarded the flat he and Hazel had secreted themselves in, Nico saw it all vividly in his mind as they made their way through the snow-thick forest. He saw his friends strewn across the ground, twisted into impossible angles, skin split to eruption of blood spilling across pale faces, eyes staring glazed and unblinking at the sky. Dead. Dead, just as Nico had always feared would happen. As he had been struggling to avoid happening for years.

And now, all his efforts were rendered moot. Nico was dragging six others into his fight, six other people that, no matter how he pretended otherwise, he couldn't deny he cared for. They would help him, support him, clear the way for him to strike the killing blow that would permanently vanquish the monster rather than send it back to Tartarus. And in doing so they would be endangering themselves.

Nico hated death. He hated it – no, he _feared_ it more than anything else in the world. Bringing so many potential victims along to a deadly fight just seemed to be tempting fate.

 _Damn him. Damn Will for bringing them_. Not for the first time Nico found himself blaming Will for his circumstances. If only Will hadn't called upon their friends, hadn't drawn them into the mix, hadn't urged them to endanger themselves so that Nico and Hazel had help that they _didn't need_ …

 _If only I'd been faster. If only I'd avoided him, left as soon as the eagles had fled. If only he hadn't seen me at all… or if only I was strong enough to let him go_.

Blame Will as he might, Nico knew who was the real culprit in the situation. He only had to reflect upon his actions with cringing self-reprimand to see where the real fault lay. Will was blameable, but it was Nico's fault.

As he found himself doing so often, even as he watched his feet as much as his surroundings in their silent trudging through the snow, Nico found himself glancing over his shoulder towards Will. Even with his heavy jacket, the floppy hat upon his head and the concentration sweeping aside any vestiges of a smile from his face, Will still glowed. Almost physically glowed, even if his hair had darkened slightly in the winter, his skin become a little paler than Nico recalled it being from years ago and eyes lacking in that carefree shine. He was still vibrant, still drew Nico's eyes, was still the centre of Nico's universe even when he remained angry, and frustrated, and annoyed by him.

Nico was terrified of Will the most. Almost more than the dragon, more than Echidna herself. The monsters, they might physically hurt Nico. They might attack him, injure him, even manage to kill him. But Will… Will could destroy Nico. The second that he fell, that was struck down and the life faded from his eyes as the blood drained from his veins…

Nico would shatter. He wouldn't survive that, in any sense of the word. He may as well fall on his own sword, vanquishing his soul into non-existence rather than endure _that_. The thought of it, the memory of that time three years before when Will had been struck down by the Chimaera, broken and crumpled on the ground and _dying…_

Ice still filled Nico's veins at the very thought. No, there was no way that he could survive such happening again, not to any of his friends but especially not to Will. Years of separation hadn't dampened Nico's understanding of that fact, had only enhanced it. Had only emphasised Will's importance, his necessity to him.

Unbidden, Will's words swum to the surface of Nico's thoughts, so far removed from the situation that they stood out like a stark, red stain upon pristine white snow. _I love you._ Such small words yet with such a vast weight. Nico had never even thought to use them before, and barely even considered doing now. They seemed just too inadequate.

 _Gods, I love him, I more than love him, and I'm leading him – I'm leading_ them _– into mortal peril. What kind of a person am I that I would do that? Am I so weak that I couldn't push them away? That I couldn't say no?_

"Stop thinking so hard, _hermanito_."

At Reyna's words, Nico raised his gaze from his feet, from the ground where he'd forcibly fastened them both in an effort to focus more fully upon his hearing and to avoid glancing compulsively over his shoulder at his friends. At Will. Reyna's words, the term of endearment, was touched with fond chiding. He raised an eyebrow at her. "What?"

"I can hear you worrying from here." Readjusting the Imperial gold spear in her hand, Reyna leaned towards Nico slightly and bumped his shoulder. "Think less and act more. The more you think the less you'll act."

"Sound words of wisdom there," Jason said from behind them. "Is that a proverb you've picked up from somewhere, Reyna?"

Reyna glanced briefly over her shoulder. "Not hardly. It's just an observation that I've found to be relevant in most situations."

"Depends on the _kind_ of situation," Piper emphasised. She was spinning the mirror-like dagger Katoptris in twirls that reflected the midday sun in a shower of sparkles. "From my experience, talking some things out is often just as important as jumping straight into a situation."

"You're not really helping what I'm trying to encourage here, Piper," Reyna said, pointedly raising her eyebrows.

Piper winced slightly. "Sorry." Then she turned to Nico. "In this case, I think that Reyna's entirely right. If you worry then you'll get distracted, which will only be dangerous if you –"

"Hey."

Kayla's sharp word cut of Piper's mellow explanation. Nico paused in step, glancing over his shoulder towards her as Kayla too paused, the hand not grasping her bow raised in a gesture of 'wait'. Her eyes drew around them, slightly narrowed as though scanning for danger.

"What is it?" Will whispered, his voice so hushed that it barely carried around to the seven of them.

"I thought I heard…" Kayla trailed off, glancing sharply to her right. "I thought…"

"I didn't hear anything," Austin whispered, frowning from the shadows of his furred hood.

"That's because you're wearing a bloody hood," Kayla hissed back.

"It's cold. I'm allowed to wear a hood."

"Yeah, and your hearing is compromised because of it while mine isn't so shut up." Kayla went back to scanning.

Nico couldn't help but agree. He and Kayla were the only ones who hadn't donned any headgear, even Reyna outfitting herself with a beanie, and, though dressed more lightly than any of the rest of the demigods, Nico felt no regret for the fact. He felt the cold only as a distant and largely disregarded reminder, favouring his sharpened senses over warmth. Tilting his head slightly, Nico was thankful for the fact when, just on the edges of his hearing, he heard it.

A rustle. Movement. Like the faint step of an animal through the snow. Or of a monster.

"Hey, Piper," Will murmured in his hushed voice. "No offence, but do you think you could stop spinning your dagger. I think the reflections might just…"

Piper immediately stopped her fiddling, eyes peeling wide as, alongside the rest of them, she scanned their surrounds. "Sorry. I can't hear anything, but…"

"We're not far off," Reyna whispered. Nico could see her fingers, white for their lack of gloves, as their tightening around her spear paled them even further. "I'm almost surprised we haven't happened upon anything yet."

"There'll be the dragon's offspring, right?" Jason said, glancing towards Nico before peering into the cover of trees that surrounded them. "Didn't you say?"

"Drakons," Will confirmed. "Probably Lydian drakons."

"Don't they spit fire?" Austin asked.

"Don't remind me."

They fell silent once more. Nico strained his ears for the slightest sound. He could still hear the animal movement, but it was of such faintness that he couldn't discern the direction from which it came. He and Kayla exchanged a brief glance, they clearly the only ones who could hear anything. Kayla slipped an arrow from her quiver, running her fingers over the fletching.

"Maybe a false alarm?" Austin said.

Kayla shook her head. "Not a false alarm. It's –"

The dragon roared. It overrode any of Kayla's continued words had she finished them. It was distant but loud, bellowing, vibrating the air with such tangible tremors that Nico was surprised it didn't loom right above them even from the distance it clearly called from. A communal flinch and fluid roll into readiness rippled through their ranks, weapons rising and all eyes spinning towards the source of the roar.

That was a mistake.

The drakons attacked. They sprung their ambush out of nowhere. In a bursting charge, from a proximity that by all rights should have made them noticeable minutes before, they struck. Nico barely had a chance to spin, to raise his sword and swing a parrying blow through the air. The drakon heading straight for him, literally flying towards him, burst in a spray of dust. Then the fight begun.

They were everywhere. The drakons were larger than those Nico and Will had encountered that morning, in an array of colours from red to orange to gold that made them stand out starkly against the snow. Crests like a peacock's tail fanned around their heads, flaring as mouths gaped wide in hissing shrieks. They lunged towards Nico and his friends, countless writhing bodies snaking through the snow and swinging around trees to dart forwards with snapping teeth. And fire.

Yes, Lydian drakons did indeed spit fire.

Trees flared into flame, somehow catching alight even in the dampness of snowy winter. The snow itself melted in vaporous clouds that thickened the air heavily and made vision hazy. Nico ignored it as best he could. He ignored the distractions, the heavy dampness of the air, the abruptly slick wetness of the ground as snow melted into sludge. He had eyes and ears, senses sharpened, only for the monsters.

And for his friends. Nico couldn't help but watch his friends.

Drakons were terrifying creatures. Even as far as monsters went they were intimidating. One of their very attacks was fear-induced paralysis instilled by their gazes. It was as dangerous to fight them because of the potential for sudden immobility as for the sharpness of their teeth, the thickness of their armoured scales, the speed of their attacks.

Nico twisted and spun between his foes, striking clouds of dust with well-aimed hits at every turn as he bodily threw monsters with his at an urge of his reaching shadows. He dodged behind trees, struggling to remain close to his friends even as he could see it to be a lost cause. He rolled beneath a soaring drakon as it launched itself into the air, rolled to his feet and lopped its tail off as it passed. Only to spin to catch another red beast darting towards him, crest flared in a brilliant gold and jaws spread wide.

There could have been hundred of them. Nico wouldn't have been surprised. He'd known the fights would get harder the longer it took for he and Hazel to defeat the monsters; it was always going to happen. The stronger the monster, the more effort it took for them to clamber their way from Tartarus. It made sense that the Colchian Dragon and its offspring would be harder to kill than the Chimaera and its twisted children. That knowledge didn't make the fact any more favourable. If anything, it only made Nico regret more profoundly that he had involved his friends. It was only another regret that snow inhibited the mobility and effectiveness of raised dead; a couple of skeleton warriors would be useful about now.

Nico ran between trees, dodging for cover and sprinting from the shade moments later. He thrust and swung, parried and batted heavy jaws from their strikes in an effort to stem the seemingly never-ending tide of drakons. He plunged his sword through an orange monster's snout, vanquishing it to dust with only a moment to shudder for the knowledge of the destructive permanency of his sword, before he was launching himself towards another drakon. Nico threw another hand of shadows in the direction of one that lunged for Jason's back, snatching it from the air before it could sink its fangs into his shoulder.

They were scattered, Nico and his friends. Regardless of how they tried to maintain their proximity to one another, they were spreading wider and wider. Reyna was standing to Nico's right in a ring of dust and melted snow with more drakon's charging towards her. Fire spurted but she ducked and rolled beneath it with barely a singed hair. Nico barely glimpsed her as he had to dodge another attack.

Piper and Jason were attempting to stick together, Jason with his gladius swinging and Piper leaping like an bounding deer as she struck with Katoptris in one hand and her Celestial bronze sword in the other.

Overhead, somehow managed to clamber into the trees, Kayla and Austin were firing arrow after arrow at their targets. Kayla, her accuracy in the image of a god itself, managed to dissipate monsters with almost every strike of the hydra arrows, the acid-dipped heads slicing through armoured scales, while Austin aimed for eyes, for yawning jaws, for the soft, coin-sized patch of bared skin where an ear should be sitting before the crest. He wouldn't last long, though, Nico knew. He would quickly run out of arrows while Kayla's instead returned to her quiver.

And Will… Will had drawn his quarterstaff in exchange for his bow and was spinning and striking like a Bō martial artist. He spun and parried, thrusting and striking and weaving his weapon around him as though it was an extension of his arm. He seemed somehow able to bodily leap above the licking flames that threatened to singe him with barely a risk of a burn. And yet even so, even at the sight of him simply fighting, Nico felt his heart climb into his mouth. He was throwing himself through the writhing carpet of drakons towards him before he even knew what he was doing.

Like clockwork, Nico spun so that his back was nearly touching Will's. Without even a word to communicate their duality, they fell back into the mutual fighting that they'd been so practiced in years before. The fluid synchrony of Nico strikes, swinging left as Will did the same, of ducking the sweeping smack of Will's staff as it soared over his head and Will dodging to avoid the sidelong thrust that Nico aimed at an attack from the right. It was almost too easy, easier than it should have been. Nico hadn't fought in tandem with anyone for years, not even Hazel. It shouldn't be that easy.

But it was with Will, so of course it was.

"Been a while," Will panted as he crunched the side of a drakon's head with the reinforced tip of his staff. "I almost missed this."

"Why in the hell would you miss this?" Nico threw over his shoulder in reply, dancing in sidestep as a smaller drakon made for his ankles and swiped his sword through its length a moment before he threw a swift, two-handed uppercut at a charging giant of a snake. He battered aside a trio of others with a sweep of his shadows before they could launch a combined attack

"Obviously," Will paused, smacking aside a drakon with a grunt. "Because I miss fighting with you."

Nico didn't reply. Certainly not because he agreed whole-heartedly.

He wasn't sure how long the fight ensued for. The number of drakons seemed to wane briefly, then wax once more. There shouldn't have been so many. Those that Nico and Will had encountered over the past days were nothing on the sheer vastness of their number. At some point, long before Nico even had a chance to consider how long he'd been fighting, Austin dropped from the trees and joined Reyna with his sword drawn, quiver empty. Kayla had to make a leap between trees as some stage – Nico didn't see when, only noticed that she'd moved – and continued her endless rain of acid arrows. Piper and Jason appeared to be rapidly draping themselves in thick blankets of dust for the number of monsters that burst around them, vanquished back to Tartarus.

He acquired injuries. Nico was fairly certain that they weren't anything exceptional – an abrasion of his skin, a bruise to his shoulder and a bite to his ankle that evidently held no venom for the fact that it barely pained him. His sword hand had become caught in the crossfire of a spitting flame, but Nico barely noticed, barely heeded the twinge of scorched skin. It only served to permanently curl his hand, clamping it more tightly about the hilt of his sword.

He heard Kayla cry out at one point that might have been when her tree was felled and she had to relocate once more. He saw a moment when Jason was bodily tugged from his feet to smack his head onto the melted ground, only for a panting, sweat-slick Piper to leap upon his assailant and strike it into dust. Jason threw himself over her in a jump that must have been at least partially flight assisted to strike another from its near fatal bite that followed. The drakon slammed into him with a force that would definitely bruise, possibly even breaking a rib or two.

Reyna had somewhere shed her jacket to reveal a ladder of scratches down the side of her left arm, causing her to have to drop her dagger in limpness. Austin, staggered ten paces from her side, had a hand pressed to his waist as though stemming a wound. And Will, disappeared briefly one moment only to reappear the next, wore grim frown upon his brow and a smear of blood at his temple. Nico almost lost his focus at the sight of that, at his sudden upwelling of terror, and only managing to maintain it when Will spared him a brief, hard stare before throwing himself back into his fighting.

They fought. They defeated drakons and they acquired their injuries. The tide of monsters did gradually ease, slowly dwindling and Nico even had a second to hope that they might be winning. And yet… no Colchian Dragon.

Nico registered that thought sometime later. Hours, minutes, he wasn't sure. He registered it just as he wished he could smother back the thought for even thinking it for its jinx. It was too late, however. As though summoned by the mental utterance, it appeared.

Dragons were huge. Nico had always known that. Huge and towering, daunting and looming. As big as giants if not bigger, they were unerringly imposing masses of scales and rippling muscles. When the Dragon appeared, it towered above Nico and his scattered party, jaw yawning to reveal curving teeth the length of saplings and as sharp as the edge of a razor. Golden scales adorning its legless, serpentine body reflected light like the mirrored surface of Piper's dagger, the spreading crest fanning like a sweeping crown about its head in a paler gold that would have been beautiful in any other situation. Nico had a moment to glimpse black eyes the size of duck ponds, staring and unblinking and laced with gold before – _don't look at them, don't look it in the eye!_

The drakons drew back at the arrival of their forefather. They withdrew from the demigods as though waiting expectantly for orders, to see what the towering monster would do. Nico found himself similarly caught in wait, not paralysed but frozen in foreboding. He had fallen at good twenty feet from Will, the easy synchrony of their parallel fighting broken briefly as it had numerous times before. He could feel Will glance towards him – or perhaps struggle to glance towards him, he wasn't sure. Nico doubted that he was anymore capable of moving than Nico was.

The Dragon swept its gaze across them, scanning and wavering like a reed caught in a tide. A giant, deadly, scaled and aggressive reed, eyes swirling with malice and hatred and keen longing for the kill. Though Nico wouldn't – couldn't – meet those eyes directly, he felt the moment its gaze settled upon him.

A hum with the volume and vibration of a jet engine powering up thrummed through the forest floor, shaking it like the aftershock of an earthquake. A following hiss, loud enough that it seemed to come from an ambient source, pierced the air. " _Son of Hades. At last. It has been more than long enough that I have need to destroy you. She will be so pleased with my triumph_."

That was all it said. That was all it had time to say. More, it was all Nico had time to hear, because then the dragon struck. It struck with the downward force of a falling building. It fell with the speed of a striking viper and its gaping mouth, three tongues curling and flexing about its teeth, crashed straight upon Nico.

He did the only thing he could do. He fell into his shadows. Barely had he the brevity of seconds to throw himself into their cool, protective darkness. The weight of the Dragon could be felt upon his tail, even as he disappeared from the point of contact.

Nico threw himself from his shadows to those above the Dragon's head. He landed with a slip, hand free of his sword latching onto the Dragon's crest. An instant was all he had, a bare second to attempt to thrust his sword downwards into the thick plate-armour of the Dragon's scales. Then it threw him. With a toss of its head, a snap of its neck like a dog shaking water from its ears, the Dragon flung him loose. The snapping of its jaws, raking towards Nico through the air, was the only indication of how close he'd come to being bitten in two as he fell. He had barely a second of panic-soothed-to-relief before he was grabbing his shadows once more, throwing himself into the darkness before he could crash into the ground. He skidded atop the Dragon's head once more seconds later.

It could have happened dozen's of times before any change was made. It might have, Nico wasn't quite sure. He'd fallen back into his determined, narrow-focused attacks, the same that he always launched upon the monsters who sought him. To the Children who hounded for his blood. The head – that was the best place to strike, he and Hazel had deduced. The back of the head. Except for the hydra, that was, but that monster was an exceptional case. Nico shed any clinging residues of fear, of discomfort for injuries, and threw himself into his stubborn, aggressive fight.

He didn't notice immediately when his friends joined the fray. It must have been at about the same that the remaining drakon's flowed back into action. In a detached part of his mind, the part that wasn't trained upon leaping between shadows, with sliding along the slick scales of the Dragon's monstrous head, with twisting from the snapping jaws of the creature as it flung him loose and tumbling time and time again, Nico saw them. He saw Reyna running at a sprint as she stabbed and jabbed at drakons, herding them away from their forefather. He saw Kayla firing arrows so fast it was as if she were an entire firing squad herself. He saw Austin striking and thrusting at the offspring, twirling with sword held aloft and smiting them into dust as often as the armoured scales rebounded his blade. Piper danced and leapt around trees, in a flowing mirror of Reyna as she skirted around the coiling, undulating length of the Dragon to strike at its children.

Jason was aloft. He soared like Superman himself in dizzying rings around the Dragon's head, striking blows that made no impression but served to distract the monster nonetheless. And Will – he'd mimicked Kayla's approach and scrambled up a tree like a monkey, his quarterstaff reverted back to a bow. The arrows he fired with more accuracy and determination that Nico could remember him capable of aimed at the Dragon's eyes, at its exposed gums, at anything in the bare seconds when Nico was thrown from the creature's neck and nearly snapped between its jaws. Nico suspected that on more than one occasion he had only survived because of those arrows.

It was better. It _was_ better, fighting with more warriors. Loathe as Nico was to admit it – and he didn't have to, not right now, not when he was _killing a dragon_ – it was true. He and Hazel would not have managed so well just the two of them. And when three focused upon the Dragon became four as the number of drakons diminished, and became five and finally seven, Nico could fully appreciate the strength of their combined forces.

Blades struck to distract. They couldn't pierce the Dragon's hide, but they poked and prodded it nonetheless. Kayla's arrows sunk into the pools of the monster's eyes, sinking into nothingness within seconds for the sheer size of them but eliciting shrieks of rage and pain nonetheless. Jason spun and soared around the Dragon's head, alighting almost as often as Nico and even attempting to jab at the damaged patch of scales at the monster's nape when he could. It didn't make a difference, didn't leave a score of damage, but he tried regardless.

And Nico struck. Again and again, he thrust his sword into the splintering scales, falling the fifty feet towards the ground when he was thrown only to dive into his shadows and alight upon the Dragon's crest once more. He barely had a moment to consider his growing weariness, the strain that such frequent shadow-jumping put upon him. His arms trembled with the force of his downward stabs upon the unyielding scales, but he barely heeded them. He barely noticed anything but for his goal, for his target. To _get rid of the monster_ before it could hurt his friends.

Echidna would try. She would certainly try. She would target those Nico cared for if she knew who they were. So Nico couldn't allow the Dragon to escape, not for an hour, not for a minute if it meant he could somehow get word to its mother, to its siblings. Nico would defeat it before then.

It honestly looked like he would, too. Until it all turned to disaster.

It started when the Dragon made a lunge for Kayla, momentarily drawing its attention from chasing Nico. Its armoured snout crashed and splintered through the tree she perched upon, smashing it to sawdust with Kayla only just able to spring free before being crushed herself. Then the Dragon reared its head and Nico, flung to the ground and momentarily paused on his knees in gasping reprieve, could feel true rage in its eyes that he _would not_ look at. It's rage burned him as it focused its attention solely upon him once more.

 _"You have murdered my children. You have destroyed my brothers and sisters. I had hoped to crush you first, son of Hades, but I will have my vengeance before that."_ It hissed a shrieking screech that tore at Nico's ears as he staggered to his feet. He wasn't the only one to smack his hands over his head in an attempt to muffle the sound. " _I will destroy you all!_ "

With that, the Dragon heaved. It roiled and spun, twisting and writhing, and like a whip cracking its tail lashed and swept through the trees. The forest caved around it, trunks falling and moaning in sorrowful cries as their roots were torn loose. Nico ducked beneath the overhead sweep of its tail, falling to his knees once more just in time to avoid the blow. When he snapped his gaze upwards, however, it was to lose sight of everything in the world at once.

Everything but the tree that Will had been crouching in, the tree that was blown to smithereens by the Dragon's tail.

The world seemed to become muffled. The cold disappeared, the aches of Nico's limbs faded into negligence. The spraying dust of dozens upon dozens of vanquished drakons that plumed in the air at the Dragon's roiling motions, clogging the air like smoke, was barely noticeable.

Someone screamed. Nico wasn't sure who.

He saw Jason struck a blow, cast to the ground in a rolling heap that he only just managed to ease with a practiced curl before ducking beneath the strike of the lunging Dragon once more.

He saw Reyna leap at Piper, dragging her to the ground and catching a blow of the Dragon's tail to the shoulder for her efforts, saw Kayla fall in her attempt to stagger to her feet and Austin dive towards her to drag her down further to avoid another swiping blow.

Nico saw it but he didn't _see_ it. His mind was numb, panic running rampart through his limbs that somehow froze him. He barely even registered the Dragon itself as it lashed and tore at its surrounds, as it nearly crushed his friends with every enraged, crazed twist of its body. His thoughts were shorting as they focused on one thought only:

Will.

Will, and the fallen tree, and the memory of his limp, crumpled body as the Chimaera had cast him aside, broken and bleeding and _dying_. Nico couldn't even see him, didn't know where he was, and he could be _dying_.

Nico couldn't breath. He couldn't think. He couldn't tell his heavy limbs to act, to leap into action, to attack or defend or _some_ thing. But his body did it anyway.

A wild pain and rage drove Nico into flight. With a wordless cry, he dragged his shadows forth, wrapping them around himself and dove into the darkness. Seconds later and he burst into the light once more, falling momentarily through thin air as he'd overestimated the height and distance. He slipped in a lurching slide when he landed heavily upon the Dragon's head, fingers barely clutching onto the crest to keep himself from being thrown loose. His shadows stretched out additional arms with barely the solidity to assist him, and even then it was a near thing. The Dragon was shaking its head fiercely, angrily, roaring deafeningly, and the world spun around him. But Nico didn't let go.

In that moment, the brief moment that it paused to fasten its gaze upon – upon Jason? – Nico struck. With all of his remaining strength, with every ounce of pain and horror and anger and anguish that welled within him, he ploughed his sword downwards into the Dragon's head. The final layer of scales fractured beneath his blade, driving home in a sharp, slick puncture.

The Dragon lurched. It jolted, flung to a standstill by the weight of the weapon spearing into its head. For a moment it didn't even seem to register that it had been stabbed, that Nico had _killed it, dammit_ , because a blow to the back of the head, piercing the skull, would _kill_ it. Then it toppled over.

The monster fell like a tsunami crashing upon the drained expanse of beach before it. In a whipping snap of wind for the speed of its collapse, it avalanched to the ground and struck with a bone-jarring smack. Nico was thrown from its head, cast like a ragdoll to bounce and tumble head over heals into the splintered wreckage of the forest and melted snow. He bruised his shoulder, twisted his wrist and smacked his head hard, blacked out for a moment. But only for a moment before he was scrambling to his feet once more, swaying and stumbling to standing even before his vision cleared.

Knowledge of reality smacked into Nico immediately with a familiar, crashing weight. The dark cloud that swamped him briefly, smothering, screaming abuse and hatred and _what have you done? You've killed it, utterly destroyed its soul!_ but Nico thrust it aside. Not now. He couldn't – not _now_.

He blinked the blurriness from his eyes just in time to see the slaughtered Dragon pop. It burst, like a balloon stuffed with flour, golden dust spewing forth. Nothing remained of its monstrous presence, nothing but a collection of tinkling bones that fractured and fragmented in the dusty blanket of where its head had been. Teeth, Nico registered detachedly. The teeth that were likely the Colchian Dragon's spoils of war.

He barely even noticed them, however. He hadn't the presence of mind to register that the Dragon was dead, that it was gone, that he'd beaten it. Staggering forwards, sweeping his gaze around his friends as they slowly and painfully rose to standing, he felt his heart tearing and throbbing in his throat. Reyna, Jason, Piper, Kayla, Austin and…

" _Will_ ," he croaked out, barely loud enough to be heard in his own ears. Where was he? Where was – he couldn't be dead. No, he _couldn't_ be –

Panic was already setting in. Sheer, mind-numbing panic, reminiscent of that which Nico recalled from years ago when he'd been wracked with just as much fear. He spun in place, already falling into gasping pants, eyes wide and staring and searching the wreckage of the dust-laden forest and he couldn't even remember where the tree had been that Will had been in and he didn't know if he was dead or buried alive or dying or –

"Nico."

The voice that called out to him echoed hollowly, barely registering for a moment before Nico spun towards it. And he saw him, in all of his dusty, bleeding, grimy self, alive and relatively unharmed. The wound to his head was pumping more freely now – why did he always have to get afflicted by head wounds? – but he hardly seemed to notice. As Will staggered through the broken remains of trees of sawdust and shattered branches, stumbling towards Nico, he dropped his bow with a clatter. He didn't seem to notice.

 _Will. My Will. He's alive, he's… he's alright, he's not dead, he's…_

It was all Nico could do to retain his footing. A faint sound choked from the back of his throat but he barely heard it. He didn't want to look away from Will but he couldn't stare at him any longer either, not at Will's wide-eyed expression, drawn with his own fear that slowly faded into exhausted relief. Nico squeezed his eyes shut so tightly that he saw stars amidst the blackness of the backs of his eyelids. His hands rose to cover his face, to press the heels of his palms into his eyes while his fingers curled into his fringe, latching onto something that would ground him from the panic that refused to fade, even when proved irrelevant.

Will was alive. He was alive, and he was safe now, just like the rest of them. Just like all of them were. He was alive, he'd survived and…

And telling himself that wasn't helping at all. Nico could only hope that he didn't burst into tears, though for the life of him in that moment he couldn't fathom why that was important. Distantly, he was aware of the reborn cold, arising from the absence of the fight and the drakons' fire, of the almost eerie silence broken only by murmurs from his friends. Of the trembles that had set into his shoulders that weren't from the chill at all.

Nico wasn't sure how long he stood there, face buried in his hands. It was Reyna's voice that drew him from his battering thoughts, from his self-reprimands of _"You shouldn't have let them come, you_ know _you shouldn't have let them come_ ". A hand touched upon his shoulder and he couldn't help but flinch. "Nico? Nico, hey."

It took a monumental struggle, an exhausting effort, for Nico to drag his hands from his face and blink with bowed head towards Reyna. She stood at his side, her hand rested upon his shoulder, a slight frown upon her face but a deep understanding nearly erasing the worry and weariness. An understanding that Nico couldn't grasp.

"Rey…n – ' He struggled to say, but Reyna overrode him.

"Calm down. You're alright. Everyone's alright. _Will's_ alright." She gestured to her right, before Nico to where he hadn't even noticed Will stood. He almost couldn't bring himself to look at him. "We're alright."

"I can't… I don't… it couldn't…"

Reyna bit her lip, frown deepening. She spared a moment to cast a glance over her shoulder towards where Nico could detachedly hear the other four of their friends slowly approaching. Then she turned back towards Nico as he struggled and largely failing to instil steady breathing. "Nico, just go."

He blinked at her, uncomprehending for the assault of his thoughts and the confusion of her words. "What?"

"Just go." She glanced towards Will, nodding. "Both of you, just go. Now."

"What? I –"

Reyna grasped Nico hand, reaching for him towards Will and slapping his fingers upon Will's shoulder. Will glanced at her, his eyes wide in concern once more. She nodded again. "You two, you've got to sort out your shit."

"But –" Will began.

"No. Just go. We've got this covered. We're fine." Then Reyna clamped them both upon the shoulder, jarring Nico with the force of her hand. "Go."

Nico shouldn't have left. He should have stayed behind, should have made sure that everyone was alright. But in that moment he knew he had to leave. He had to go before he snapped, before he cracked and dissolved into a mess that he could never piece back together again. He spared only a moment to glance up at Will, to meet his eyes and feel the rush of those hateful tears welling in his own.

Then he grabbed his shadows and dragged them into darkness.


	10. Chapter 10 - Unravelling

A/N: This chapter *points furiously* has been _so long_ in coming. Really, it's almost a relief to have it written. I see this as sort of the turning point of the story - not halfway so much in length (I think the second half is a little longer?) but in content. I think. I don't know :p  
Anyway, thank you to everyone who had commented. An extra special thank you to **LittleBrawley** because you are _wonderful_ , and I adore your reviews. Thank you so much!

* * *

 **Chapter 10: Unravelling**

Will would never get used to shadow travel. He got _more_ used to it each time he experienced it, but even when he'd been travelling with Nico more regularly it hadn't been with ease. The stretching, squeezing feeling, the smothering darkness and the coldness of the void between spaces was disconcerting in an entirely unearthly way.

They stepped out into an evening scene. Or more correctly they fell out. Will physically tumbled to the ground, falling to his knees onto… sand? Grey, silver, white sand that was as fine as icing sugar and just as soft. He could almost feel himself sinking into it like quicksand before it packed firmly enough beneath his weight.

In an instant, despite his weariness, Will was dragging his gaze around himself. Scanning his surrounds for potential threats even though a solid, unwavering part of him knew that Nico would never drop them into the middle of danger. What he had taken to be evening was simply a scene in the absence of sun, illuminated by an ambient light of wan grey beaming down from low, swirling clouds overhead. The plains around them, sandy plains stretching as far as the eye could see, were broken only by a trickle of a stream not twenty feet away, bubbling happily in cool, dark ripples to the music of its own passage. It only took Will a moment to register where they were, a moment to recollect each of the other few times that he'd visited before.

The Underworld. Nico had shadow-travelled them to the Underworld. Why, Will wasn't sure, but…

He turned towards Nico and instantly regretted that he'd taken a moment to get his own bearings. Nico was crumpled on his knees beside him, face buried in his hands once more and visibly shaking. His back was curved so that he was folded nearly double, tucked in upon himself in the way that he became when he was upset, or scared.

Except that Will had never seen him so upset before. He'd never seen him so terrified.

Will could almost understand it. Or at least he thought he could. His own heartbeat had been pounding merry hell on the inside of his skull for the past hour or so, throbbing each time he glanced towards Nico and saw him fighting. When he saw the sweeping arcs of his sword as he swung in practiced motions, or the lunging, darting sprints as he flew to someone's aid. The moment when Will saw a drakon latch itself onto his ankle, only for Nico to slice it into dust a moment later, or when he had _faced the bloody Dragon by himself._

Will had been momentarily frozen, just as everyone else had by the appearance of the Colchian Dragon. When it had finally reared itself above them, facing them like the ultimate foe of a boss battle, the superior to its offspring that lay in piles of dust beneath it, he'd been briefly immobilised. And when the Dragon had spoken, had lunged almost too fast to see straight at Nico, he'd screamed in pure panic.

Nico shouldn't have been able to avoid that crashing lunge. There was no way, in the fit of paralysis that had gripped them all that he should have made it clear. For a moment, Will had thought he hadn't. But then, in a swirl of black shadows above the Dragon's head, he'd reappeared in a burst of shadow travel, sliding briefly upon the monster's head and striking a blow that loosed a jarring, cracking sound throughout the entire region like splintering glass. Then he'd been tossed loose and Will had nearly screamed again, only for Nico to somehow twist from the snapping jaws of the Dragon, to dive into shadows before striking the ground in a way that Will hadn't even thought possible. And to reappear once more above the monster's head.

How did he do that? _How did he do that?_ Will had never seen him use his shadows like that before. It seemed somehow different to shadow-travel, different to the conjured tentacles that he whipped around him like extra extensible arms. But Will didn't have time to even consider what it was or how he did it before he threw himself into support, into attacking the Dragon alongside the rest of his friends.

And then the Dragon had snapped. It had attempted to clear the forest in a single blow that had torn the tree from beneath Will like a flower plucked by a child. It had been more luck than skill that Will had avoided being crushed, smacking into the ground with a heavy crunch and only just managing to roll free before the groaning trunk smashed into the space he'd fallen. He'd only managed to clamber to his feet in time to see Nico, face ashen pale and drawn into an anguished expression, plunge his sword through the Dragon's skull.

Yes, Will thought he could understand at least a little of what Nico was feeling. Perhaps a lot. He'd nearly caved to his terror countless times throughout the battle, terror for the welfare of Nico, of his friends, and had only maintained his battle-ready stoicism with the knowledge that to crumple would endanger those he fought alongside. He thought he had a fairly good idea of what was going through Nico's head, but…

Nico looked a wreck. Will had never seen him like that before, so broken and unhinged, as though he were going to physically fall apart. Crawling on hands and knees towards him, wide-eyed and staring, Will reached tentatively towards Nico's trembling shoulder.

He'd barely made contact when Nico lurched backwards from him. He stumbled to his feet like a newborn colt, staggering and turning with his head still bowed and tucked from view. From Will's view.

"Nico," Will began, but his words were drowning in those Nico blurted forth a second later.

"Gods, Will. Gods, you're such a _fucking idiot_ , I don't even – I can't even – " He gave a slight cry that could have been a sob but for the frustration that lathered it so thickly. "You don't even understand. Can't you just – why didn't you just _stay away?_ "

Will was silenced. Not so much because of the words, though the force behind them that drove them to a louder cry than any Will had ever heard from Nico before caused him to flinch. No, the real reason he couldn't speak was because a moment later Nico had dropped his hands from his face, turned and looked him straight in the eye.

He was crying. No, crying would have been too small a word for what Nico was doing. Tears pouring unstoppably from his eyes, painting his pale cheeks that failed to flush with a hint of colour even with the intensity of his emotions. His shakes grew into shuddering sobs hitching and heaving as he was physically wracked with them. Will didn't even know if Nico knew he was crying an ocean of tears for his expression seemed completely ignorant of the fact. He made no effort to wipe his face clean of the mess that marred it, dribbling from his nose, dripping from his chin trembling as violently as his shoulders. His shoulders themselves were hunched as though he was attempting to fold in upon himself even in standing.

Will couldn't move. He couldn't even urge himself to rise to his feet but instead simply slumped on his knees on the sandy floor. Overwhelming guilt to the extent that he could never have anticipated coursed through him just for the sight of the horror, the terror, the sheer, mind-numbing and quailing panic in Nico's expression. "Nico, I'm –"

"Three years," Nico burst out. He was yelling now, though his voice cracked and broke, was warbling and thick with tears. "Three fucking years I made sure you stayed away from me so that this wouldn't happen."

"Nico, I'm alright. We're all alright, nothing –"

"Three years! Do you have any idea how fucking hard it was to stay away? How hard it was to leave in the first place? You were lying in that hospital bed and I didn't even know for sure if you would even wake up but I _had_ to leave because if I didn't go then I never would have. Do you have any idea what that was like?" Nico's eyes squeezed, a hand rising to his head to press a trembling palm to his brow. "You said it hurt you when I left? Hurt _you_? It fucking – I didn't even – _essa mi ha ucciso, Will_! _"_

Will couldn't reply. He was caught, pinned like a rabbit in the sights of a snake, Nico's words ringing in his mind even as he watched him bodily shaking before him. He wanted to rise to his feet, wanted nothing more than to cross the short distance between them and wrap Nico in an embrace, to say he was sorry, to promise that he was never going to leave him, that he wouldn't let anything happen to them, to either of them. But he couldn't move. Nico was pouring his heart out for the first time since he'd found him again, and it was rocking him on the foundations of everything he'd forced himself to know.

 _It killed me, Will._

Will had always thought Nico had forced him aside. That for whatever reason, his actions of years before had been deliberate, intentional, and with the full weight of Nico's desires driving them. That was perhaps what had hurt the most out of the circumstances; Will loved Nico, had known even then that he loved him wholeheartedly, and yet Nico had left. He'd _wanted_ to leave. Even with the knowledge of what was written in his letter, Will had felt betrayed by the one person he trusted and needed the most in the world.

Then he'd found Nico again. He'd found him, and there had been nothing but wariness from Nico. Will knew they'd both changed, had both _been_ changed, but for Will at least his feelings had stayed the same. If anything they had grown more profound, more definite and more desperate. Will knew what it was like to live without Nico and he knew that he could not, would not, suffer it for the if he could help it. That he would _always_ want to be with him.

Only Will hadn't had that option. Nico had taken it away from him, and continued to attempt to take it from Will every other moment that they were together. Will felt almost as though he had to keep a physical hold on Nico every second of the day otherwise he would simply vanish and leave him again.

Will couldn't handle that. He didn't think he could survive it a second time, not when he'd only just gotten Nico back.

But now Nico was turning his assumptions on their heads once more. Will had always been one to overthink things, to jump to conclusions even before all the facts were presented. It was a flaw in his logic, he knew, but he couldn't help himself, especially when enough evidence seemed provided for him to accurately make such assumptions. But apparently Will had been wrong. He'd been wrong in thinking that Nico had turned from him, that he had shifted his focus to something of more importance. Will had known from his words over the past week, had known that the fear for their friends had been a primary drive for Nico and Hazel's disappearing act. But the depth and insistence upon pursuing that end? The driving force behind it? Will hadn't quite fathomed just how great it was.

Nico had left for him. Entirely for him. Not because Will would get in his way, or because he would distract from that which required greater focus. Not because Nico would feel the need to defend him and as such would jeopardise his mission, though Will suspected – no, he was certain – that Nico would do just that. Nico was a kind person, a good person, even if he tried to hide that reality. He cared for others, though he would deny it within an inch of his life, and he cared for Will.

The war of joy, of love and devotion, waged against Will's guilt, his grief, his shame. He almost didn't realise Nico had begun speaking again at all, didn't register any of it at first and only after the switch back to English understood it was because he was spewing forth a torrent of rapid Italian.

"… nearly gave me a heart attack. What if you'd died? _Cosa cazzo allora?_ " He was shaking his head fervently, his voice fading from a yell into wavering, straining croaks as he curled further upon himself. "We fought a fucking dragon, Will. A child of Echidna, _uno dei più forti_ – one of the most powerful monsters in existence. What if – what would have happened if – _se ero troppo lento_ – one more minute and you could have – _voi quasi_ …"

He was switching between English and Italian in fluid jumps, apparently not even realising he was doing it. That as much as anything told Will just how upset he was. Nico had rarely been one to use Italian unless he was being sarcastic and taunting, always intentional and dangling Will's lack of knowledge of the language above him. That, or when he was too detached from his own words to realise. Tears were still spilling forth, pouring out what looked to be years worth of grief in endless gushes of pain that tightened his face and only made his skin seem paler by the second. He looked like a weeping ghost, the fierce grasp of a hand upon fringe only furthering the impression of anguish

" _Come posso vivere se si muore?_ " Nico finally said, barely more than a whisper. Will's breath caught at the words, as they unfolded in his mind. _How can I live if you die?_

Then Nico collapsed. Like a puppet with his strings cut, his knees folded and he slumped to the ground. Will once more felt the compulsive urge to reach for him, to touch him, to comfort him, but something held him back. In spite of Nico's words, in spite of the sentiment and the desperate plea, he was frozen on his knees on the icing sugar sand. It was fear, selfish fear, that held him fast, fear that Nico would withdraw from him once more. He wanted to comfort him, to hold him, to tell him that everything would be alright, but what if Nico didn't want that? For all of his tears, Will knew he was still angry. That beneath the rising waves of sorrow, of hysteria, he was angry with _Will._ Despite his words, maybe he didn't want Will anywhere near him?

A beeping in Will's pocket sounded the arrival of a message. It chimed merrily, a stark contrast to the silence unbroken but for Nico's heaving sobs. They sat in stillness and silence, Will making no move to reach for either his phone or for Nico. He didn't know what to do – he knew what he wanted to do, but that was a different thing entirely.

His phone beeped again, and distractedly Will dropped his gaze down to his pocket. Detachedly, he wondered that he could even receive a message so deep in the Underworld. Maybe it was simply Leo's in-built mechanics at work again. Slowly, eyes drifting back to Nico's bowed head, his trembling curl that was nearly bent double upon itself once more with chin tucked from view, Will drew the phone from his pocket. A brief glance at the screen, just long enough to read the extensive message, was all he managed before his fingers dropped it limply to the ground.

Silence. Silence stretched between them, unbroken even by Nico's sobs that had faded into muteness. Nico wasn't a crier – out of the two of them, Will was far more prone to such. He'd never seen Nico cry for anything before, suspected that if he actually ever let himself do so it was in the privacy of solitude. It had hurt Will once, a long time ago, to consider that Nico wouldn't let himself cry around him but… perhaps he could understand it now. Nico laid himself bare with his tears, bare and open and bleeding in a way that he'd never let himself in any other instance. It was as though every last wall was torn down from around him, peeling back the doors of a gaping wound to let the darkness and sadness gush forth. This was Nico, completely vulnerable and utterly exposed.

Will wanted nothing more than to hug him up, to swathe him in a blanket and hold him close. To wrap him in a hold so tight that Echidna herself wouldn't be able to tear them apart. His own damned fear held him back, however. A fear of being pushed away.

"Annabeth… sent me a message," he finally said. Or muttered, voice hoarse. He hadn't anticipated it to be so thick with emotion, hadn't known that – was he crying? A hand raised to his own cheeks felt dampness there, a wetness he hadn't even realised. Swallowing through the tightness of his throat, Will tried again. "She said… she said that they're all okay. That they managed to defeat Scylla and…" He trailed off. He wouldn't tell Nico that Hazel had apparently passed out from exhaustion, that Percy had disappeared for nearly half an hour beneath the water before they'd found him once more or that Leo had broken his wrist when he'd simply _refused_ to let go of the wheel of his ship for even an instant. Nico didn't need to hear that, not now. Not when he looked so broken and exhausted, barely seeming to keep a hold of his sanity.

It was apparently a good idea, however, to relay Annabeth's words. Before his eyes, Nico seemed to visibly sag, shoulder releasing their tension into a different kind of slumping curl entirely. He uttered another single sob that sounded more relieved than heartbroken. "Thank the Gods. _Se chiunque…_ if anyone had…" Another sob and he dropped his face into had hands once more.

Will couldn't help himself then. He wouldn't have been able to hold himself back even had he wanted to. Nico could push him away all he liked but he wouldn't let him go. Will would embrace him, would hold him fast and would show him that he was there for him, that he would offer every ounce of support that he could. That even if Nico didn't want it he'd still be there. Crawling forwards, he reached towards Nico and in a single, encompassing motion dragged him into his arms.

Nico didn't resist. After the chill of his body, the tremors and sobs that still continued to silently shook him, that was the first thing that Will registered. Nico didn't push himself away and though he didn't return the embrace either it felt more as though he was simply too exhausted to try.

Will held him silently. He dropped his chin onto the side of Nico's head and nothing more. They didn't move; Will didn't even bother to try rocking the sadness from Nico as he would a child. Just the contact – it felt like enough. He just held him. And he waited silently, simply revelling in the moment that he could hold Nico. That he could at least attempt to comfort him, to convey his own sadness at the pain that he was feeling, even if there was nothing else he could do about it. He didn't speak, simply waited.

Until Nico spoke. He murmured something unintelligible, muffled by the press of his face into Will's shoulder. Will turned slightly, shifting his gaze towards the mussed hair at the back of Nico's head. "Hm?" He hummed, just loud enough to be heard himself.

It was tentative at first, so soft that Will didn't immediately notice. When he did it startled him slightly. Nico's fingers crept along the sides of his jacket, pausing for a moment just to hold, and then slipping inside. Will felt the tug upon his shirt, the tightness of his fingers locking into the woollen fabric. And he murmured once more, his voice still shaking slightly. _"Ti amo,_ Will _. Ho bisogno di te e… non voglio perderti."_

Nico's voice rung and resounded in Will's ears, even softly spoken as they were. Will's breath caught as his thoughts hooked upon the words. He barely had a thought to register them, however, before Nico lifted his head, raised a hand from the fast handhold upon his shirt and cupped Will's face in his hand. He stared at him only briefly, a solemn, wide-eyed stare overflowing with feeling in the red-rimmed wateriness of his gaze. Then he leaned forwards and pressed his lips against Will's.

 _I love you_.

Will's mind shorted as the words repeated in his mind, at the sincerity that they rung with.

 _I need you._

He raised his own hand to curl around the back of Nico's head as he felt himself sink into the kiss. A kiss, a simple kiss, yet so weighted with want, with longing with… _Gods,_ Will hadn't realised how much something so simple could suddenly mean to him, how much he'd longed for it.

 _I don't want to lose you._

The Underworld seemed to fade around Will, lost to the reality of simply being with Nico, of truly touching him, of holding him, of _knowing_ him seeping through his veins. The battle against the Colchian Dragon seemed to fade into disregard, the fear, the adrenaline rush, the sadness and grief and weariness that had followed. Even the thought of their friends, of those injured and wavering in recovery from the fight, fell from Will's thoughts.

Maybe it wasn't the right time or place. Maybe he should have waited, should have even urged Nico to take them back to his flat before he did anything further. But he didn't want Nico to shadow travel, and more than that Will didn't think he could wait. Not when he pressed his lips more firmly to Nico's and Nico, far from withdrawing from him as he had half feared, sunk back into him as though he'd been waiting his entire life to do so. Nico's arms wrapped around Will's neck, holding him closer as Will drew his own around his waist. The saltiness of tears upon his lips, lips that parted and allowed Will to sink into him, to curl his tongue against his own in a gentle caress and to taste his breath… it was all so familiar and so vastly foreign.

No, it wasn't the right time, nor the right place, but Will didn't pause for the thought. He didn't pull away from Nico as he bodily clambered into Will's lap, as though he were attempting to climb into his skin with thighs settling on either side of Will's to hold them closer together. Will locked his arms only more firmly around him in return, holding him closely and sure that never, ever would he let him go. Especially when he could make out the words that Nico gasped in the moments between pressed lips, in the brief seconds they paused for breath.

" _Ti amo… Ti amo,_ Will… Gods, I love you. Don't ever… don't ever do something like that to me again…"

Nico wasn't expressive with his emotions. He'd never blurt them out, didn't verbally declare his love or affection. He didn't even confess when he was feeling happy, or sad, or angry or – no, if there was one emotion he did express, that he did verbally announce, it was anger. But even that was nothing like this.

Nico was tripping over his words, words that they'd never fully exchanged before Will had voiced them himself. They'd thought they'd never needed to, had never felt the inclination, but there was something about speaking them, about hearing them spoken, that was entirely captivating to Will. He couldn't get enough of Nico's low, breathy words, had to physically lean into him to catch them, to taste them on his lips, to draw kisses from the emotion of them that he hadn't had the opportunity to for years. The coldness of Nico's fingers on the back of his neck, the warmth of the slight flush in his cheeks as Will drew his fingers across his skin… the feel of Nico, the very smell of him, rich and close and entirely _him_. How had Will survived for years without him?

They had nothing that would have helped their situation, nothing that would have made it easier. Who would think of equipping themselves with bedroom supplies when charging towards a potentially deadly battle? But they made do. In a peeling of clothes, discarding jackets and boots, jeans and shirts until they were in nothing but their skin, Will hastened to discard every article of clothing that stood between them in an effort to clutch back at Nico, to draw them together once more. Even such a brief and necessary moment apart was too long. He grasped at Nico's waist once more, hands unable to touch enough of cool skin, familiar but from oh-so long ago, only to fall forwards with an uncoordinated thump so that he was nearly crushing Nico.

Pausing, the feel of Nico in all of his long limbs and grasping arms beneath him, of the heat rapidly flooding into his groin at the slightest contact, Will drew in a panting breath. He raised a hand to graze upon Nico's cheek, to sweep aside the sweat and grime-matted fringe that sought to cover his eyes and stare down into his eyes as Nico panted heavily and blinked up at him in turn. Will paused only to wipe the single remaining trickle of a tear from his cheek before leaning forwards to plant a kiss upon his lips.

"I love you, too. Always have and always will."

Nico didn't reply that time but for a faint murmur that was almost a whimper. He said nothing, but his arms tightened once more around Will's neck, shifting beneath him so that their legs locked together in a tangle. It was as much of an answer as Will needed.

Spitting into his palm and entirely blind to the crudeness of it, he reached down between them, propping himself onto his other arm as Nico adjusted himself. A brief fumbling and Will breached him, tempting a gasp from Nico's lips and a tightening of his arms that still wrapped about Will's shoulders unyieldingly. One finger, probing and prying for two, and then three and he couldn't wait any longer. He wasn't the only one. With another pause to spit, Will caught onto each of Nico's legs behind the knees, lifting his hips and lined himself up, and with barely another pause pushed himself inside of him.

He lost his breath in the same way that he lost his mind. To the clenching heat, the pressure of tightness, the feeling and the knowledge of contact that gradually eased into a welcoming embrace. Will groaned as he slowly thrust himself deeper, a sound mirrored by Nico. Slowly, gradually, gasping, he eased himself into Nico until he was fully seated. Then he had to pause, for no other reason than that he would surely break if not. With blurry eyes he gazed down at Nico beneath him, his fingers curling in their hold and squeezing for the familiar, glorious contact of skin.

Nico was gasping just as heavily as Will himself. His eyelids fluttered, head tipped backwards and an almost pained crinkle to his brow. He clung to Will as though he never even considered the thought of letting him go, arms and legs locked around him in a way that could have been awkward but only filled Will with warmth and overflowing love. Dropping a kiss upon Nico's lips and pausing because Nico simply demanded that he not draw away immediately, Will finally, achingly and with a sharp, overwhelming wave of pleasure, withdrew to thrust forwards once more.

Again, and again, his hips snapped forwards in a compulsive rhythm. Will found his breath gasping only shorter, hand pressed against the ground clenching in the sand as his other clung tightly onto the back of Nico's knee. His heart was thumping in his temple, a tandem pulse to the throbbing heat in his groin that only built with each rock of his hips. Pleasure curled along his spine, only enhanced by the moans and truncated cries that Nico uttered through lips caught firmly between his teeth. Will though he could have reached completion just at the sight of Nico like that – his head tipped backwards, face drawn in creases of pain-pleasure and eyes squeezed firmly closed. He arched beneath Will's thrusts, rocking his hips back to meet him even as his arms tightened only more insistently upon Will's shoulders.

They didn't last long. Will didn't care, not when Nico came in a cry at almost the exact moment he did. Thrusting with a final snap of his hips, Will uttered his own cry as the tightness in his groin exploded and ruptured, cascading in rippling tides of pleasure throughout his body and triggering every nerve ending to stand to stark attention. His vision flashed bright white, momentarily blinding him, and he rode out the waves of pleasure in stuttering then smoothing rocks of his hips, breath gasping raggedly into his lungs. With a feeble, jelly-limbed sagging, he nearly collapsed upon Nico.

Not that Nico seemed to mind. Far from it, he only wrapped himself around Will more tightly for his closeness, as vastly different to how he usually was in his surly disregard. Will dropped his forehead onto Nico's sighing as the pounding of his heart eased to only the speed of a galloping horse rather than the diving flight of a falcon. He breathed in Nico's panted exhalations as though they were ambrosia.

Slowly, finally, Will blinked his vision into clarity. He peered down at Nico from the tightness of his embrace, unwilling to draw even an inch away from him despite the potential discomfort that Nico might be feeling. Not that Nico seemed to mind either, that was. He didn't seem to mind at all.

Dark, slowly blinking eyes peered up at Will from the tangled mess of his fringe. Wide and open in a way that Nico so rarely was, and Will couldn't help but fall, utterly captivated, into their depth. With a heavy sigh, he tilted his head slightly to drop a kiss onto his forehead. "Nico. Please never leave me again."

"Mm," was all Nico murmured in reply. It could have been in agreement or dissent, Will didn't know. It hardly mattered. It didn't matter what Nico thought, what he intended, because Will had decided. He was never letting him go again.

* * *

The sky was beautiful. In the Underworld, there was no sun, no radiating warmth that drove away the shadows. Not that it was cold exactly - the air was stagnant, unchanging, almost unfeeling entirely. But the sky changed. It grew, curling in clouds of varying shades of grey from a deep dark to a pale almost white. It wasn't like the sunny sky of the mortal world, or the star-speckled blanket of night. But Nico thought it held its own beauty all the same.

The bed of fine sand cradled him just as would a mattress as he gazed up at the curling streaks of clouds overhead. That sand too wasn't warm, but neither was it cool. It simply... was. Nico liked that. He didn't feel the cold so much anymore, nor particularly registered heat but to notice when each extreme slowed his body. This ultimate in between – he liked it.

"It doesn't matter. It's not like it even matters at all."

Every inch of his body was exhausted, muscles aching all over and protesting the urge to move, but Nico did anyway. Turning his head slightly, he drew his gaze sidelong towards Will stretched out along the sand at his right. He too stared up at the sky, lying in a comfortable sprawl. They'd re-dressed themselves in their jeans and shirts slowly and neglectfully over the past hours with the vague intention of maybe leaving sometime soon. Maybe. They hadn't yet but they should. Probably. Maybe.

Nico took the moment just to stare at Will's profile, staring just as he'd found himself doing for most of the past hours when not turned towards the sky. He drew his eyes along the straightness of his nose, the slight curve of his lips, of his cheekbones peppered with freckles that appeared paler, almost washed out in the light of the Underworld. A slight frown settled upon his brow when he spoke but it wasn't the Wrong Frown. Nico was relieved to see that. He didn't like it when Will frowned like he had, angry and deep, or sad and grieving, or frustrated and agitated. This Will, so reminiscent of the person he'd been in the past even if Nico knew he was far from that person, was much more agreeable. Almost without his consent his hand tightened where they held onto Will's fingers.

"It does matter," Nico replied.

Will shook his head without lifting it from the sand. "No, it doesn't really. In the greater scheme of things, it doesn't actually hold any significance at all."

"That's because it doesn't bother you."

"No, it's because it doesn't matter."

"You personally don't have a problem with it but -"

"They're practically the same thing," Will sighed, turning an exasperated stare towards Nico. A stare that grew into a soft smile that bellied his chiding tone. "Butter and Nutiva are practically the same thing."

"No, Nutiva is a poor alternative for the underprivileged vegans of the world," Nico said.

"I doubt they consider themselves underprivileged. Veganism is a lifestyle choice."

"You're condoning veganism?" Nico raised an eyebrow. "You, who panics if anyone around you isn't having a perfectly balanced diet?"

"I'm not saying it's for everyone," Will said, raising an eyebrow pointedly in return. "I just think that if someone choses to pursue veganism as a lifestyle then they would have to carefully monitor their intake to ensure that they weren't damaging themselves unduly."

Nico snorted. "Damaging themselves?"

"Nutritional deficiencies are a serious problem. I'm not saying you can't be healthy as a vegan, just that it might be harder to have a well-rounded diet."

Shaking his head into the soft pillow of sand, Nico turned his gaze back up to the sky. "Regardless, I still maintain that the Nutiva coconut stuff is a poor substitute for butter."

"You would hardly even taste the difference, surely. Don't tell me you honestly sit their eating it with a spoon or something? Done some experimenting, have we?"

Nico shot him a sidelong glance, ignoring the teasing even as he welcomed Will's growing smile. "Have you ever eaten it before?"

"No, I eat butter."

"Exactly. So how would you know?"

Nico saw Will's mouth open from the corner of his eye before he closed it once more with a snap, shaking his head. He saw the growing of his smile too, and though he didn't let himself show it, Nico was happy to see it.

They'd been speaking of nothing and everything for hours now. Spoken as they hadn't for years, as they had both resolutely refused to do over the past week. The spoke of the inconsequential, like butter versus Nutiva, or whether Vermont was a better place to live than Long Island, or if they were truly the only people - people or monsters - in the vast stretch of the Underworld that they could see or if they actually had an awkward audience watching them just from the periphery. Will seemed unnerved by that, muttering something about being very aware that they were in Nico's father's domain and he really didn't feel comfortable enough with Hades to be caught in a compromising position. Ever.

Just as often as the inconsequential, as the silences that could stretch comfortably for minutes on end, were the deeper exchanges. The solemn. The thoughtful and pondering and questioning. Everything that Nico had wanted to talk to Will about but had held himself back from doing, because he didn't want him to think that he cared enough to ask, because it was embarrassing to do so, because there were other things to think about, to not talk about, that were paramount his mind.

That had changed. Nico had broken, in a fit of exhaustion and pain and terror. Horrifyingly, mortifyingly, he had shattered and broken into pieces in front of Will. The tears had come before he had even realised it and he hadn't been able to hold them back. Words had spewed forth and Nico had hardly been aware of what he'd said. He'd been angry and terrified, desperate and pleading, crazed in his frustration and manic because he'd been so scared. Nico didn't like to cry, but he couldn't help it. In the moment, in the relative privacy of the Underworld, he had let loose. He'd blurted out the emotions that had threatened to consume him in more of an unintelligible torrent of sound and feeling than actual words.

And he'd told Will that he loved him. For the first time in his life, Nico had actually said the words. It was the first time he'd said them to anyone. They hurt to be voiced, raking and grating against his throat at if he was swallowing nails but... he couldn't have held them back to save himself, couldn't stop himself from repeating. Not even if he'd wanted to, because they needed to be said. Will needed to know.

For the first time in so long, Nico had let himself be held. It was nothing but a clinging embrace at first, but that had been enough. Enough until it grew into more, at least. Nico hadn't even realised how much he'd needed it, how much he needed Will, until he had him entirely.

It had opened up the floodgates. When passion had settled into a gentle embrace once more, they had spoken. They spoke in a way that Nico hadn't for years, not with Hazel and certainly not with anyone else. Will had slowly pried, asking Nico where he'd been, where he'd lived, what he'd done. He asked with genuine curiosity that became less hesitant as the conversation grew, about how Nico used his shadows, about what monsters he'd fought and was it solely Echidna's children that hunted him or were there others? And apparently with greater concern than that he'd possessed for the defeat of those monsters, was he healthy? Was he sleeping well, or had it consistently been as bad as Will had seen over the past few days? Was he eating enough and spending adequate time outside - which Will sceptically suggested he hadn't been for his paleness. Nico had called him a mother hen more times than he could count and Will only seemed to grow more satisfied with each mention of the teasing nickname.

And Nico had asked him in turn. He'd asked of where Will lived now, of how his mother was, if he still kept contact much with the rest of his siblings. He learned about Lou Ellen's cafe and Cecil's inclination towards becoming a pilot – Gods help the world. He learned about Will's apartment in Manhattan barely a handful of station stops away for New York Presbyterian where he was doing his residency and how he spent little more than his sleeping hours within it. Nico asked and he listened as Will described his completion of his medical degree and his tentative inclination towards neurobiology - following in his mother's footsteps - but how he truly preferred working with trauma patients, with those rushed to hospital in an emergency and losing himself into the frantic, narrow-focused sequence of combat healing that he was so practiced in from his days as Camp Half-Blood's head medic.

More than that, though, Nico learned of Will's struggles. He didn't say anything expressly but Nico heard it anyway. He heard the truth behind Will's laughing disregard of how he swore he'd "almost failed my degree that last semester" when Nico knew he was as studious as they came and wouldn't possibly allow himself to fall behind without a reason. He heard how he vaguely referred to many of his siblings as though he hardly saw them anymore and hadn't really cared to know what they were doing with themselves. He listened as Will mentioned Naomi's nagging that sounded a little too sincere, a little too persistent. And he knew, even without being told – Nico had been destroyed by leaving Will, but Will hadn't been much better.

When Will grasped Nico's hand with more firmness than was entirely necessary given that they both lay prone and unwilling to move beside one another, Nico didn't object. It wasn't only because he knew Will needed to touch him, needed the reassurance that Nico had forcibly disregarded in the past because... because Nico needed it too. Just a little bit. Just this once.

Will's hand was squeezing his own once more, as though he was distracted with a fear-inspiring memory, a fear that Nico might lurch to his feet and flee or throw himself into the shadows without a word of warning. Even when he contemplated the validity of Nutiva as a butter substitute, he seemed unable to force himself to entirely ignore his concerns. Will had always been a worrier, Nico knew, always an over-thinker. Evidently time hadn't changed that fact.

"Hazel still has that habit, then?" He asked.

"Hm?" Nico hummed questioningly.

Will glanced back towards him, turning his head once more. "The Nutiva thing."

Nico rolled his eyes. It was almost an effort to do so - the physical exhaustion from the battle against the Dragon, the emotional strain from his following explosion, the lulling, encompassing heat of his reunion with Will in which they'd both kicked aside the walls that remained between them until nothing but rubble remained. All of it left Nico feeling bone weary in a way he hadn't felt in a long time, even with the constant presence of tiredness, of listlessness that consumed him. Yet even so, the light-heartedness of the conversation he now shared with Will seemed to alleviate that exhaustion, if only slightly. Alleviate it and replace it with exasperation.

"Yeah, she's still got it."

"Well, if it's as inadequate in its substitution of butter as you deem it -"

"It is."

"- then that's a sure a sign as anything that Frank is steadfast in his own stance. He maintains that it's more ethically correct to eat vegan stuff, but will go and eat an entire leg of lamb every other Saturday."

"Always organic though, wasn't it?"

"Of course. Ethical and all that." Will smirked up at the sky. "He's got his fixed priorities, Frank does, regardless of what anyone else in the world thinks on any matter. When he gets an idea in his head, he's like a boulder for all the ease you'll be able to move him. Same thing with what happened with Hazel, I guess. They're really alike in a lot of ways."

Nico turned to fully face Will himself, shifting slightly so that he rolled onto his shoulder. "He was really worried, wasn't he? About what Hazel thought of him, about why she really left?" Nico felt that familiar flutter of guilt that seemed to dwell upon the edges of his consciousness these days at the thought of his friends' concerns. Of their speculations as to the reality of how much Nico and Hazel actually still cared for them. Nico still had to wonder at times how they even could question it, because wasn't it obvious? But he couldn't reprimand them for their considerations when he knew his own were of a similar grain. Not open reprimand, anyway.

Will shifted himself until he was similarly rolled to more fully facing Nico in turn. "I think we all sort of were. Frank... he's been sort of at a loose end lately. I say he's set in his ways, but even he doesn't seem to know what those ways are anymore. Or at least he didn't until he saw Hazel again."

"And now?"

"Now..." Will gave an awkward impression of a shrug in his sideways recline. "I'm pretty sure Hazel could openly scorn him and he'd still shadow her like his life depended on it."

"That sounds familiar," Nico muttered with a raised eyebrow towards Will. Will only grinned a wide, crooked smile that was so typically him, so similar to the bright, friendly person that Nico remembered from when they were kids, that he couldn't even pretend to be scolding anymore. "Hazel couldn't scorn Frank if _her_ life depended upon it."

"That's a relief. Frank does the kicked puppy a little too well."

"Are you speaking literally?"

"I might be."

"Hilarious. Your literal metaphors are as sharp as ever." Nico couldn't withhold his own slight smile that drew across his lips, however. "But seriously, Hazel would never push Frank away again. Ever. She was a mess for months afterwards. We hardly spoke for about the first year after she left unless it was about monsters."

Will's smile slowly died. "Really?"

Nico nodded, dropping his gaze to their hands as much to avoid Will's stare as anything. "You probably think I'm a bit of a selfish idiot for saying this -"

"Only always," Will said with the faintest of smiles to indicate he teased.

Nico paused, attempting a returning smile. He couldn't quite manage to brush the resurgence of guilt aside. "But it was hard. On Hazel," he clarified, though he was almost entirely certain that Will knew he referred to himself as well. "It's not exactly enjoyable to almost completely isolate yourself from the entire world. Especially for Hazel; she's always been such a friendly person. She thrives on company. Sort of like you."

"And you."

Nico shot Will a half-hearted scowl. "No. Not like me. I don't like people, remember?"

"You do like some of them."

"Not most of them. Just a very select few. I like being by myself. It wasn't really a problem for me, going days – or nights, really – without speaking to anyone." Nico tasted the bitterness of the half-lie upon his tongue. It was true that he was better at being alone, far better than Hazel was – or used to be, for she'd adapted and shaped herself where necessity dictated. But there were times when Nico felt the unfamiliar, overwhelming need to be with someone. With a particular someone, and in those instances he felt as debilitated as any other pathetic and desperately lonely soul.

"You're a liar," Will said quietly.

Nico unintentionally raised his gaze to meet Will's once more. He didn't want to show that he agreed with him, that yes, Will was largely correct in his simple words. "I'm not -"

"I know you're not all that fond of people in general, Nico. Not all the time, anyway." Will reached towards him to tug gently at Nico's fringe for no other reason than that he seemed to want to. Nico let him. "But being alone? All the time?" Will shook his head, grinding the powdery sand into the hair on the side of his head. "You really don't have to lie to me, you know. And it's okay to not want to be alone. There's nothing wrong with that."

Nico opened his mouth to reply, to offer refute where he had always done so in the past. Only for the words to die upon his tongue. Perhaps it was their setting, the tiredness, the atmosphere of honesty that in a lot of ways Nico sorely hoped didn't last indefinitely, but he couldn't bring himself to argue with Will's words. Not when they were said with such sincerity, without accusation, as nothing more than a tentative, off-handed suggestion.

Sighing a heavy breath, Nico briefly closed his eyes. He could have fallen to sleep if he was given the opportunity. When he opened them again it was to stare directly into Will's watchful, unblinking stare. The love and adoration that seemed to only grow with every second Nico met his gaze was as uncomfortable as it was welcoming. Even when Nico had professed his own love, even when he would have rather died than to see open disregard or dislike in Will's gaze – he knew that now, even if he didn't know exactly when he had discovered such a reality – Nico still felt uncomfortable seeing it.

"I suppose," he murmured slowly drawing the conversation from the discomforting topic, "that we should probably head back to them all."

"You sound so enthusiastic," Will said with another small smile.

"Not unenthusiastic, just... I'm quite comfortable here, actually."

"You and me both," Will agreed with a nod. Then they fell into silence once more, a silence of comfortable, simple staring in which Nico felt even less inclined to move.

Finally, however, Will pushed himself up to sitting. "You're probably right. Besides, I think it would do you some good to sleep."

"Speak for yourself," Nico mumbled without any heat. He couldn't quite bring himself to sit up quite yet. It seemed like such a monumental task.

"Oh, I do. I wouldn't mind sleeping for a week or two myself. But you," Will reached forwards and tugged gently upon his fringe once more. Nico wondered where he'd picked up the habit from, though he wasn't entirely averse to it. In many ways it was less intrusive than many of his friends' touches. "You should probably sleep for a couple of years."

"I doubt I'll sleep at all actually."

"Insomnia?" Will asked, even though he must have known from his previous questioning the truth of his speculation.

"Mm."

"We should probably do something about that," Will muttered, and Nico thought his words were probably more directed to himself than to Nico. Then he shook his head, less in denial than to draw himself from his thoughts. "Still, even just resting your body, closing your eyes and all that, will be better than nothing. Even if you don't sleep."

"I feel like you've told me that before," Nico said, finally struggling to push himself up alongside Will. He hadn't realised how stiff he'd become lying immobile for so long. The bruises and grazes from the battle were making themselves known and his ankle where the drakon had briefly latched onto him had begun to throb. "Maybe about a hundred times."

"It's the truth."

"I believe you, oh knowledgeable Medicine Man."

"Medicine Man?' Will gave a slight laugh that was more than a little incredulous. "You haven't called me that in years."

"I'll have to remedy that fact, then."

Will clambered to his feet, dragging Nico up with him in a way that was more of a lift than simple assistance. They spent a moment shedding themselves and one another of the clinging sand, perhaps a little longer and a little more thoroughly than was entirely necessary. Will paused with a hand laced through Nico's hair after a scrub that was more affectionate than cleansing. "You know, you should probably wear your hair back or something. Tie it up if you're going to keep it long."

"What, like you?" Nico asked, raising an eyebrow. Will's hair was exactly as it always had been, just long enough to draw his mess of curls into a short tail at the nape of his neck. "Are you a fashion guru now, then?"

Will smiled, shaking his head. "Hardly. I meant it more for practicality's sake. Surely it must get annoying when you're fighting, getting in your eyes and all that."

Nico shrugged a shoulder. "I've never really noticed."

"Or you could cut it," Will suggested. "Do you cut it? It looks like it."

"Yeah, whenever I can be bothered." Nico shrugged again. "I don't exactly make an art out of it, though."

"I can see that," Will said, though once more it sounded more affectionate than genuinely teasing. And delighted, oddly enough, as though he'd learned something of particular wonder.

Nico disregarded the notion and reach up to Will's head, gave his own hair a violent, unnecessary scrub in retaliation. Then he held out his hand in offering. "You good to go?"

Will paused an inch from grasping Nico's proffered hand, despite that he was still clasping his other. He hadn't let go of Nico's fingers for a second, not for what seemed like hours. "Are you sure you're alright to shadow travel us now? I know you're tired, so -"

"Will," Nico sighed, rolling his eyes. His mothering side was slipping out once more. "Stop being such a mother hen."

"I'm merely being the concerned boyfriend," Will replied, his smile easy even as a touch of genuine concern remained in his eyes. "If you're too tired now I really don't have a problem with sleeping down here for a while. I'll just send Annabeth or someone a message to let them know. You know we get reception down here? How weird is that?"

Nico shook his head at Will's words, even as he felt a flood of warmth seep through his chest at the mention of 'boyfriend'. They'd not declared anything officially, not really, even when Nico could only assumed they had fallen at least partway back into the relationship they'd shared before. Things weren't perfect, likely wouldn't be entirely stable and free of trials soon or even in the far future, but for now? That simple word was like an elixir to Nico's ears.

Shunting the sappy thought aside, Nico reached forwards and grasped Will's free hand. "You worry way too much."

Will glanced up from where he'd dropped his gaze to Nico's hand, a gaze accompanied by a smile as sappy as Nico's thoughts. "Only about you, you know."

"I sincerely doubt that. You worry about everything."

"Mostly about you."

Nico rolled his eyes, squeezing Will's hand probably a little tighter than was comfortable. "I might actually be able to believe that." Then, without another word, with a weary and almost painful beckoning to his shadows, Nico drew them from the Underworld.


	11. Chapter 11 - Settling

A/N: I feel like this chapter should have been posted at Christmas *sigh*. But I'm not that cruel. I won't hold out that long :)  
After what felt like a very, very big explosion of the last few chapters, I hope you don't mind that this one tapers down a little bit. Sort of a come-down. Hope you still like it.

 **Chapter 11: Settling**

Snow was falling but Will didn't mind. If anything, he found that it added a nice sort of ambiance to the winter scene, the road ice slick and the air spotted with light sprinkles. Yet it was devoid of a sharp wind that would turn the pristine perfection of the surrounds, of the snow-heaped sidewalk, into a freezing ice brick. It was just cold enough to instil a chill despite two jackets, a scarf, a hat and gloves.

But Will didn't mind. He didn't mind a lot of what would usually irritate him these days.

Two weeks after the battle against the Colchian Dragon, after Scylla had been defeated, Will was still riding upon something of a high. A high that had absolutely nothing to do with Christmas, though for the first time in years he found he could almost get into the festive season. It didn't even have all that much to do with defeating the monsters with barely any injuries, for in reality they had been substantial – there had been more on his team than he'd realised, what with Jason suffering a concussion, Reyna's arm fractured in three different places and Kayla succumbing to multiple broken ribs and muscular strains from falling from her tree.

That was to say nothing of those in the other team. Annabeth had downplayed their severity, likely as a means to avoid worrying him when she had graciously taken the time to message him as to their friends' status. Hazel had been unconscious for a full two days, Leo's broken wrist had actually been a brutally broken arm, while each of the rest of them appeared to have accumulated their own range of injuries and afflictions, alongside a newfound fear of water – Percy wasn't the only one who would be set to challenging himself in such a regard in future as he had struggled to so many years before. Thalia hadn't had a shower for a whole week after the fight.

But they'd all survived. They'd survived and little the worse for wear, all things considered. Injuries were patched up and their healing accelerated with ambrosia, and little more than the shadow of a bruise or the cuff bandage that Will no longer insisted Leo wear but he continued to anyway remained of the incidents.

Will's joviality persisted, and it was all because of Nico.

Things weren't as they had been before Nico had left. They weren't picture perfect – if Will's and Nico's relationship had ever been so in the first place – and it wasn't all an easy breeze. But it was a sure sight better than what it had been. So vastly better that it was almost unrecognisable. Nico wanted Will, he wanted to be _with_ Will, and Will would be damned if he'd let any misguided hesitancy on Nico's part stop them from fulfilling that being.

Yes, Nico was still reluctant to be touched at times, but he'd never been all that fond of it before. Yes, they still argued, Nico still called him an idiot, but when had he ever not? And yes, at times he seemed to fall into melancholy when he looked at his friends, or at Will when he thought Will didn't notice, and seemed to struggle to bite back words of fear, of weariness and pleading that they just _leave_ because it was too dangerous. As if such an argument would ever sway any of them.

But Nico had said he'd loved him. It had been in the heat of the moment, in a burst of uncontrollable emotion that Will had never witnessed from Nico before, but he'd still said it. And though he hadn't yet repeated it, Nico hadn't rescinded his words. Will didn't really expect to be told again, but he didn't need to be. Nico loved him, and he would always remember the exact sound of those words, the ring of his voice as he'd uttered them with absolute sincerity.

Things were certainly better in that regard. Even better still because finally, _finally_ , Nico seemed to accept that he couldn't make Will leave. Things weren't perfect and they likely never would be, but they were certainly drifting close in Will's opinion. Even if the looming presence of the Echidna's children still hounding after Nico and Hazel was a constant reminder of the danger to their very existence.

 _But not now. Not at this very moment,_ Will thought, and he was content in that fact. He was almost entirely confident that Nico and Hazel were not, at that very moment, being chased by monsters. Even if they were, even if a threat did arise, they had support. Annabeth and Percy, Jason and Piper, Leo and Calypso, his brother and sister and Thalia, Frank who he had barely seen leave Hazel's side in weeks, and Reyna who appeared to have become something of Nico's shadowing bodyguard. If Will and Nico went out on a scouting mission, shadow travelling to a speculated site of monster activity, it was almost always with Reyna in tow. Far from becoming disgruntled for the additional accompaniment, Will was quite happy to have the extra support. Reyna was a demon with her spear and dagger. Who wouldn't want the ex-praetor at their back?

Still, content as he was, Will would like to be back to Silverwater as soon as possible. He'd taken a flight to New York, resisting Nico's attempts to shadow travel him there directly because why push him to weary himself when he didn't have to? Will had never and would never like the idea of Nico shadow travelling. Even if it did cut about an hour and a half out of his travel time, to say nothing of that to Burlington and thence from JFK Airport in New York to the hospital. And to make a side stop along the way, of course.

Will skirted around a pair of women leaving the Lou Ellen's _Golden Nectar_ café and stepped into the warmth within with a sigh. The dark walls and the crackling fireplace seemed to emit heat as readily as the closely pressed bodies. It was crowded at midmorning, as was fairly customary for the little café, but Will found he didn't much care that he had to wait in a queue of idling patrons for a kick of caffeine. He nodded towards Mina at the register who was apparently working the morning shift that day as he fell into line.

Only to have his name called from behind the counter in an overloud shout. "Will!"

Glancing upwards, Will caught sight of Lou Ellen half standing from what he had come to recognise as being the 'staff table' seated behind the counter. In actuality, it was as much for Lou Ellen to sit at herself and invite particularly close friends for a drink and a chat when they visited her café as anything else. As Will smiled and stepped from the queue towards them with a wave, he noticed Cecil Markowitz already seated across from her, the typical fedora he'd worn for years perched atop his head instead of the more practical beanie that most sane people wore in winter. He turned a smile with a slight milk moustache towards Will as he approached.

"How you doing?" Lou Ellen asked, rising fully to her feet and offering him a hug. "I feel like I haven't seen you in ages. That's rude, you know, not coming to _my_ café when you work just around the corner." She scolded but when she drew away from him she was smiling, , the indignation of her tone absented from her expression.

Will grinned, noticing only detachedly that she blinked as though in surprise at his response before broadening her own smile in return. "You know your coffee's the only thing I'll drink, Lou. I've just been busy lately."

"Not too busy to hang for a moment, are you?" Lou Ellen asked, starting around him and across the room to make a grab for one of the few remaining free chairs. "Hang ten, have a chat?"

Will shrugged. "Yeah, why not."

"Swell. What can I get you?" Always on the move, dropping the chair and chattering away at a million miles an hour, Lou Ellen swept towards the counter. "Cappuccino, yeah? You still taking it with soy?"

"If you've got it handy," Will said to the ponytail swinging from the back of her head.

"Of course I do," she called over her shoulder, dancing around Mina and setting about with her usual efficiency.

Shaking his head at his friend's antics and ever-present bubbliness, Will dropped into the seat beside Cecil and finally turned his attention towards him. "Hey, Cecil. How've you been?"

Holding up a finger as he finished half of a cream biscuit, Cecil gave Will a beaming smile. "Good!" He said through a swallow. "Really good actually. Yourself?"

"Oh, come on, you can't just leave it at that. What's happened?" Will had always been closest to Cecil and Lou Ellen out of the rest of the demigods besides his half-siblings. He regretted in that moment that he hadn't had a moment to spend more time for them over the last few weeks. Or months. Or years, even. When he really thought about it, Will realised he hadn't spent all that much time with them at all since… well, since what had happened with Nico.

 _Then that's just one more thing I have to remedy,_ Will thought decisively, nodding to himself. Then he turned his attention back towards Cecil. His friend was very obviously fighting to hold back his spreading smile and failed completely when he finally continued. "I'm officially a fully certified pilot!"

Will stared at him blankly for a moment before his own grin spread widely once more. "Seriously? Gods, Cecil, that's fantastic!"

Cecil was practically wriggling in his seat. "You have no idea, I'm so happy right now."

"When did you find out?"

"Just this morning."

Will couldn't help himself. Rising from his seat he leaned towards his friend and wrapped him in a tight squeeze. Cecil gave a small, startled sound before his enthusiasm returned with a chuckle and he returned the embrace. Drawing away from him, Will clapped him on the shoulder. "I'm so happy for you. Gods, that's –"

"Terrifying, truly," Lou Ellen said, returning with unnatural speed and a quickstep to slip around behind Will and drop his coffee onto the table before him. Her own smile was fond, however, and she reached across the table to press her fist into Cecil's shoulder in a jostle that looked like she'd done it several times that morning already. "You, flying planes? With actual people inside?" She shook her head. "What happened to my destructo-friendly counterpart, exactly?"

"Oh, he's still around," Cecil replied. "Comes out every now and again when I visit Camp Half-Blood to stir up the mischievous streak in my descendants."

"You don't have any descendants. Unless – have you been fooling around less carefully than usual?" Lou Ellen raised a pointed eyebrow.

"Alright, apprentices, then," Cecil corrected, ignoring Lou Ellen's suggestion entirely. "Speaking of, you know that Hephaestus kid, Spaniel?"

"Spaniel?" Will asked, with a faintly incredulous snort.

"I know, poor kid, right?" Cecil brushed aside the thought with a wave of his hand. "Anyway, he's taken a liking to Greek Fire and has apparently made a self-fuelling contraption to store live flame. Apparently he carries it everywhere, wreaks havoc wherever he goes. Apparently Chiron wants you or me to come out and have a look at him, talk to him and convince him that 'destruction isn't the be all and end all'."

"Why would he think we could help?" Lou Ellen asked with a smirk. "I distinctly remember you sleeping with your bottled Greek fire for years."

"That's what I was wondering," Cecil replied. "Maybe as a role model, suggest that we grew out of it a little bit or something?"

" _You_ grew out of it maybe. Spaniel sounds like my kind of kid."

"Pretty sure he's more mine."

"Pretty sure you just said he was a son of Hephaestus," Will pointed out, smiling at it friends' banter. "Not to throw sand in your eyes or anything."

"That's splitting hairs," Cecil said, stuffing the second half of his biscuit into his mouth. "He's more closely related to me, anyway. We're actually cousins, unlike _you_ , Lou."

"That's discrimination!" Lou Ellen exclaimed, as always rearing her hackles at the reminder that her mother, Hecate, was technically one of the lesser gods. "I object."

"I notice you don't deny it, however."

"I just said I object. How is that not denying?" Lou Ellen turned towards Will. "Do you see what I have to deal with when you're not around?"

Will smiled easily, if a little guiltily. He had been neglecting his friends, and now that he could really see it he felt badly about that. He paused to take a sip of his coffee. "Sorry. I'll strive not to abandon you so much from now on." He hoped the light-heartedness of his tone was coloured too deeply by actual sincerity for them to hear it.

Lou Ellen's faintly curious gaze suggested she hadn't overlooked it entirely. "You'd better. Now spill."

Will raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"Yeah, what?" Cecil mimicked. "I thought we were talking about me? I haven't even prevailed upon Will the sheer awesome-ness of my certification. You know, Will, I've only got to get up my experience, clock my hours and then I can –"

"Shush, shush," Lou Ellen interrupted him with another fist to his shoulder. It looked definitively harder this time, more like a physical punch than a gentle, friendly nudge. Cecil grumbled as she turned her full attention back to Will. "Tell me."

"Tell you what?" Will repeated, though he had a very distinct suspicion he knew what she was talking about.

"You," Lou Ellen said, jabbing a pointed finger towards him. "What happened?"

"What happened with what?"

"Don't you play dumb with me, Will Solace. You've been practically glowing since you stepped through my door."

"Oh, is that what it was?" Cecil pondered aloud, turning a smirk towards Will. "I just thought that you might have finally decided to get some decent lighting in here, Lou."

"Oi, diss my café and you can take yourself out."

"No thanks. I'm done."

"Damn straight you are." Lou Ellen turned back to Will and her expression actually softened a little, the round ruddiness of her cheeks seeming to flush with more affection. "You look happy, Will."

Will buried his nose in his coffee but more to hide his smile than his bashfulness. "Aren't I always? You used to label me 'Mr Happy'."

Lou Ellen shook her head, dropping her elbow onto the table and chin into her hand. Her eyes sparkled slightly. "Not lately you haven't been. Not after… what happened before." She didn't describe what she referred to but Will knew to what it was anyway. All of his friends and siblings referred to the 'Nico's Absence Situation' as simply 'that' more often than not. "Something's obviously changed. You actually look like you're smiling now."

"Hey, I always smile."

"No, you pretend to smile," Cecil said, leaning back into his seat and folding his arms across his chest so his shucked-up woollen sleeves bunched at his elbows. "There's a difference.

Lou Ellen nodded her agreement. "I love you, Will, and I'd put up with a lot of shit from you if I had to, but I'm going to come out clean here: you've been miserable for years. We all know it."

Will winced more for show that anything. "Jeez, you really kick a man where it hurts, don't you?"

'It's my forte," Lou Ellen said. "So tell me, who's the lucky guy? Or is it a girl? I didn't think you were bi but never can be sure with you Apollo kids. Most of you seem inclined to taking after your dad in that regard, I reckon."

Will lowered his coffee, startled and blinking. "What?"

"You've obviously met someone," Cecil said with a knowing nod. "To be honest, I'm surprised it's taken you so long. Lou and I – look, we'd never think badly of him or anything, I'm sure he had his reasons, but we've sort of been waiting for you to get over –" He bit himself off with a yelp that it didn't take much for Will to was sourced from Lou Ellen. She was turned towards him with wide eyes, piercing him with a hard glare that loudly exclaimed " _Shut up!_ "

When she glanced back towards Will, however, it was with her smile reaffixed. "What my moronic comrade-in-arms meant to say was that we're happy for you. You seemed like you needed someone. Not to 'get over' anyone," she quoted Cecil's words with a scrunch of her upraised fingers and a skewing of her tone that made her sound just slightly daft, "but just for yourself."

Will glanced between his two friends. They were both turned towards him with open faces, smiling expressions and fond encouragement. As though they truly were pleased he had 'moved on' and supposedly found someone. Will bit back the urge to correct them both, to exclaim that he _wouldn't_ get over Nico because he never could, and this supposed person who had made him happy was literally the only person in the world who actually could. That Will was wholly and completely committed to his love for Nico and that had never changed, that it never would changed, and that their time apart to subsequently be drawn back together had only reaffirmed his understanding of that fact.

Will's friends didn't understand. Lou Ellen and Cecil had liked Nico in their years at Camp, and even after that when they'd caught up as friends, but they had never been _close_ to him. They had never really known him, not like Will had, or Kayla and Austin, of Percy, Annabeth, Jason, or the rest of them. And when Nico had left, leaving Will heartbroken and hurting, they had immediately risen to his defence in the most offensive of fashions.

Will hadn't stood for that. He wouldn't sit by and listen as his friends, those who stood so loyally beside him, said even the slightest bad word about Nico. Will could if he wanted to, just as _he_ was allowed to get angry at him, was aloud to curse his disappearance and rage over his loss, but no one else could be infuriated on his behalf. Will wouldn't allow anyone else to hate him on his behalf, because throughout it all he'd still cared for Nico. Even with the damage that was wrought upon him, Will had still wanted him back, had desperately wanted to be with him, and that had never changed. It had never wavered, not once over the years. It never would.

Lou Ellen and Cecil, they didn't hate Nico. Not really. They were protective of Will, angry at Nico for the impact he'd made on Will regardless of whether it was intentional or circumstantial, but they didn't hate him. Over the years, he'd become a taboo topic amongst them, and evidently they had been holding hopes that, as Nico faded from their minds, so too would he pass from Will's.

They didn't understand. Neither of them did, because neither of them had really been in love in quite the same way before. Oh, Lou Ellen had her mortal on-again-off-again boyfriend that she was always bemoaning the existence of, and Cecil had recently begun to date Ai Miyagi, daughter of Athena, but in love? Will might be out of line in his presumption but in this case he didn't think he was incorrect. And neither of them would understand that Will wouldn't just 'get over' Nico, no matter how long they were apart.

It wasn't their fault. They were just… wrong.

Clearing his throat and composing himself, Will took another sip of his coffee. "I'm not seeing anyone new." _No one_ new _at least._

"Liar," Lou Ellen immediately declared. "You're such a liar. You so are."

"No, I'm not. I haven't met anyone new and I don't intend to."

"You _have_ ," she persisted. "I've seen just this same thing happen with my sister Olly hundreds of times."

"Hundreds? Really?"

"She gets the same glow, the same sparkly eyes and everything. And," Lou Ellen leaned towards Will and prodded his cheek. "She can't stop smiling."

As much to taunt her as because he couldn't help himself, Will let his smile spread forth, ignoring the pointed " _See? Look what I told you_ " on Lou Ellen's face. She was right in that regard, at least. Will had found himself smiling more in the last month than he had in the entire year before that. And it felt good, not forced in the slightest.

Shrugging, Will leaned back from the second prod towards his cheek. "I don't know what to tell you, Lou. You're wrong."

"I can't be wrong. It's so obvious – the happy glow, the abrupt turnabout from your moodiness –"

"No, don't beat around the bush, tell me how you really think I've been behaving," Will said with a shake of his head.

"You know what I mean," Lou Ellen sighed. "There's no other explanation for it. Unless… is there?"

Will shrugged. "Maybe."

Lou Ellen's eyes lit up. "Really? Oh, juicy gossip, tell me, tell me, tell me!"

"Since when have you been a gossip monger?"

"Since now and since it's you," she said. "So tell me. What is it? You were involved in a delicious coup d'état that ended favourably for your party. No, you got a pay rise."

"How are those two possibilities even within the same realm of comparison?" Will said with another shake of his head. "And no, I haven't. To either of those. Besides, I'm doing my residency, Lou. I'm not looking to get a pay rise any time soon."

Lou Ellen clicked her tongue, frowned and drummed her fingers on the table thoughtfully. "Okay, how about this. You performed a surgery but you found out that it was _actually_ a dead body who'd been mutilated beyond repair and…"

Will listened with half an ear, smiling into his coffee as Lou Ellen's speculations became more and more outlandish. A sidelong glance at Cecil showed he wore a similarly amused expression, leaning back in his chair with arms still folded and eyebrows raised. He did glance towards Will when he felt his eyes upon him, however, and there was an almost knowing light within them that made Will pause. Lou Ellen might be oblivious but surprisingly… maybe Cecil wasn't? Was it possible that he'd guessed the truth?

They spent nearly half an hour together before Will made his excuses and rose to leave. He didn't particularly want to be away from Nico – from any of his friends at Silverwater – any longer than he had to be, even with his new resolution to afford more time to his friends. He had to visit the hospital and then make it back to the airport for his return flight; he didn't quite have the luxury of dallying. With a wave over his shoulder to Lou Ellen and Cecil, he stepped back into the cold morning air.

It wasn't far to New York Presbyterian from _Golden Nectar_ , which was one of the reasons that Will demonstrated such loyalty in his taste in coffee. Only one of the reasons, anyway. It was not more than a short walk before he was striding through the doors to the hospital beneath the luminescent red and white sign that stood like a beacon over the main entrance. He nodded at the receptionists, though he didn't recognise the two currently in attendance, and made his way to his chief resident's office. He didn't have an appointment, and Dr Malkins already knew he was taking leave, but Will felt the need to explain himself even a little better than he had hastily done so over the phone weeks before. In person, too. He owned Malkins that much. It was the reason he'd felt the need to come to New York in the first place.

It felt strange walking down the familiar halls of the hospital when he wasn't working. Even stranger to view them through eyes that, as Lou Ellen had claimed them to be, felt physically brightened. The entire world felt brighter to Will, and he hadn't even realised just how weighted down he'd been in the past years until that weight was alleviated some. He could view the white walls and bustling nurses, the doctors striding along carpeted hallways and the patients wandering with varying degrees of mobility, with new eyes. The smell of sterility, of cleanliness, wasn't a biting reminder of his duty but that of his passion, of his drive. It posed new prospects with markedly more positivity that it previously had. Will had always wanted to help people, but over the years it had become almost a chore. He loved his job but… it had very much become a matter of stepping the paces.

Now it was different. He almost wanted to jump back on the floor, wanted to put his knowledge into practice and do what he'd been trained to do, what he'd been _born_ to do.

 _Not yet, though,_ Will reminded himself, though he hardly needed reminding. _Soon, but not yet. There are more important things to handle first_.

Turning a corner, and starting along that which lead to the chief's office, Will found himself pausing in step. He stopped just as Naomi Solace, idling before the chief's door, pushed herself from the wall and turned towards him. After a blink, an uncertain step, Will started towards her in turn.

He'd told his mother that he would be visiting the hospital that day to check in with the chief. He'd mentioned it just in a passing message, just to reassure her so that she could be eased from her concern as to his wayward behaviour and worries that he was dropping his work. Will hadn't expected her to wait around all morning for him to arrive, however.

"Mom," he said, frowning as he approached before that frown naturally eased. It was harder to maintain these days, he'd noticed, and felt strange to wear at the same time that his smile simply… didn't. "What are you doing here?"

Naomi stepped towards him and made to engulf him in an embrace but paused with her hands upon his shoulders. She stared up into his eyes with a slight frown upon her brow, drawing wrinkles from the lines that peppered her forehead. Naomi Solace was a brilliant woman, an incredible surgeon and Will had always known her for her analytical, deductive mind. Yet even he couldn't have anticipated her response.

She smiled. Her smile was slow and wide in a way that crinkled her eyes with more joy than Will had seen on her face in… in _years_. His mother tilted her head to the side and reached up to pat his cheek. "You found him."

Will didn't know how she'd guessed. No, not guessed; how she had _known_. But she did, and just like that he felt his joy swell once more as it had been only growing every day for weeks now. His mother wasn't like Lou Ellen and Cecil. She didn't resent Nico for his disappearance despite how it had hurt Will. If anything, she'd hurt almost as greatly. At the same time, it was with her own delight that she practically glowed. Will's smile stretched across his face and he leaned in to wrap Naomi in an embrace of his own.

"I found him."

They looked liked a bunch of idiots. Or they did in Nico's opinion, anyway. Still, he couldn't quite withhold the small smile that tweaked at his lips, even when he turned around and looked in the opposite direction. His friends' laughter, their shrieks of excitement and cries of "You're getting glitter everywhere" and "Tinsel is supposed to be colour coordinated", were impossible to ignore.

Christmas was in the air. Nico had never been one to celebrate before, even when Will became enthusiastic and had bombarded him with festive joy and too many presents rather than leaving him to his usual quiet morning routine. Even the times when he'd visited Hazel and she made her muted yet fond expressions of affection through gift-giving, or the year he spent with Annabeth and Percy at Percy's mother's house in a whirlwind of endless feasting, too much wrapping paper and the sorry kind of Christmas songs that play three months in advance for that one day a year. Nico rolled his eyes when Jason encouraged him to make plans for 'the day', suffered Piper's kisses that she bestowed compulsively upon everyone's cheeks, withstood Leo's horrifying Christmas puns and commiserated with Calypso over the irrelevance of the celebration for people who were, by all rights, Greek or Roman inclined.

It didn't stop them, though. It never had. And while Nico had always found it largely unnecessary just how enthused they all became for that one day – Gods, it was only one day! – this year was different. Not Christmas itself but… it was different just being around them.

Nico could withstand just one Christmas without making a dispute about the general joviality. Even if it was just one. Anything was better than that Christmas two and a half years ago when he and Hazel had deliberately spend the day doing absolutely nothing without realising their resolution to do so. It had simply happened as they'd both been captured by the thought of what those they'd cared about were doing in that very moment. Nico had made a point of ignoring Christmas the following year, and the one after he actually had. He hadn't even noticed it had come until it was gone again.

This year was different and it wasn't bad for that difference. Not in the slightest.

The cabin in Silverwater, that which the demigods had assimilated, had become a riot of colour, glitter and dangling ornaments, lights flashing everywhere. Nico didn't know where most of the decorations had come from, nor who had put most of them up specifically, but they seemed to just be breeding, additional hanging stars and draperies of tinsel springing to life of their own accord. Colourful bulbs looped around every doorway, around all the windows, flashing and alive even at midday. Little clay and plastic figurines dotted every available surface, baubles hanging from door handles, wall hooks, simply scattering the floor where they'd fallen.

The hated sound of Christmas songs blared from someone's music player, Michael Bublé's rich, drawling tones resounding throughout the room. Nico had to admit that, though hated as the songs were for their very 'Christmas-ey' nature, they was probably the best of a bad lot when it came to renditions of the classics. Someone – Nico suspected Frank given the sap stains still streaking his neck – had dragged a tree indoors and the majority of his friends were currently clambering over one another in an attempt to dress the poor pine in the most decorations. Nico wasn't even sure where the tree had come from, though suspected from the brief flutter of shadow-travel he'd sensed an hour before when he'd been at the flat that Hazel and Frank had likely gone on a field trip.

All in all, it was mayhem. Christmas seemed to have crept up upon them, and the day before its arrival was filled with setting the scene, monsters entirely forgotten by at least half of their number. Nico spared many a glance in the direction of the fireplace next to which the rapidly outfitted tree sat, to Piper as she wrapped an eye-rolling but smiling Calypso in tinsel, to Austin as he blew away on his saxophone in harmony with the playing carols, to Jason as he chased a cackling Leo around the room as he clutched the over-large star overhead and crying that it was "Mine, I bagsed it! I'm the one who's putting in on top!" They'd originally intended to crown the tree with an angel but that idea had been quickly swept under the rug when Thalia had scrunched her nose up at the little cupid that Kayla produced from nowhere and said how it looked like a fat, gold harpy. No one could quite look at the angel the same way after that.

All in all, the atmosphere that predominated was… happy. Happy as it hadn't been for weeks. And more than that, as Nico glanced at his sister sitting cross-legged on the floor beside Frank, cutting out buntings in the shapes of snowflakes, it was genuine. Hazel was actually smiling, a real smile that Nico hadn't seen in years. Nico would put up with any number of Christmas carols to see that.

Even so, he felt disinclined to actively participate. Percy had ceased his requests of it too after, in what Nico still argued was probably the most realistically accurate decoration yet, he'd urged an antlered deer skeleton from the snow outdoors and suggested it could be part of the nativity scene that Percy had erected out on the front lawn. Percy had quickly subsided, allowing that Nico no longer had to join them. Nico was quite happy for the fact, though deliberately feigned hurt that they didn't want to use his deer. What was a few remaining strips of flesh hanging from its flanks to detract from the merriness? It kind of made it look wreathed in tinsel. A grisly, morbid mimic of tinsel.

Which was how Nico found himself seated at what had become the Investigation Workbench of the cabin. More correctly it was the dining table, but it was so strewn in electronics, computer and phones, in annotated maps and scribbled notes, that it would have been impossible to find a place to put a plate. Nico found that he quite liked the overwhelming immersion in investigation. Especially when it made logical sense, regardless of what Leo said about how no one could find their own head in the mix of 'rubbish'.

Nico sat alongside Annabeth as they each jabbed and clicked away at their respective computers. Reyna was across the table from them, fletching some kind of arrows with strange white heads that he hadn't seen before and shaking her shaking her own at the antics of their friends. He barely spared a thought for that oddity, however. He was currently tracking what he could make out as being the route of the Caucasian eagle's flight, though it was just as likely to be a false alarm. They'd had several of them over the past weeks and though Nico suspected that the one he was currently studying was another mis-sighting, or perhaps a diversion of one of the eagle's children, he had to look. The images were terrible, however, and the satellites not much better.

"Shit," Annabeth suddenly swore at his side, barely audible over the sharp burst of laughter from Jason and Percy across the room. "Shit, shit, _shit_."

Glancing up from his screen, Nico leaned towards her, peering at her own. "What's wrong?"

Annabeth gestured at the screen before making a frustrated and largely useless jab at the keys again. "It's locked me out. Firewall. Just sprang out of nowhere. I don't even know why the files would need security; it was only of middling privacy and I've already cracked three passwords to get through this far. And now it throws this at me."

Nico didn't really care where she was looking that had such privacy. Or why. He wasn't unfamiliar with the situation, of monsters hacking into government or business files, leaving software paper trails that could be traced by anyone with enough knowledge of computer systems to be able to see the footprints where they stood. But Echidna's children were… he didn't think any of them would be inclined towards using a computer. Except perhaps for…

"Have you found something on the sphinx?" Nico asked.

Annabeth glanced towards him. She frowned, quirking her lips and folding her arms on the table before her. Then she sighed. "I thought I had. I'm not so sure."

"What makes you think that?"

"Just that some of this tampering. I found something that looked like a trail to Ladon, maybe, but I wasn't sure. _This_ looks like a deliberate cover up."

Nico raised an eyebrow. "What would make you immediately think it was the sphinx, then?"

Annabeth shook her head. "It was just a thought. That, and the fact that two of the password questions were riddles. Not the neo kind but the more classical type, you know? And I've faced the sphinx before. It just reminded me of it. Of her."

Nico frowned. He recalled that Annabeth and Percy had once told him about facing off against the sphinx once upon a time. If anyone would be able to recognise the sphinx's tampering it would be Annabeth, and not only because she was universally considered to be the smartest of the lot of them, even without her daughter of Athena status. He turned his gaze back towards her computer.

The page posed to Annabeth was all too familiar to Nico. Blank of screen but for some sort of artful swirling and an overlarge padlock at the very centre, it lacked even the option to backtracking steps to escape the pitfall. Pursing his lips, Nico made to reach for Annabeth's keyboard. He paused. "You mind?"

Annabeth, still frowning at the screen, only shrugged and gestured a "Go ahead" with one hand. Nico turned the computer towards him, tapping on the keys to pull up the source code and beginning to run his fingers in practiced motions. His eyes flickered across the screen as symbols, letters and what could have been considered hieroglyphs to an outside observer for all the logical sense they made, sprung to life before him.

Barely a minute later and Nico turned the computer back towards Annabeth, the screen clearing into the plain, dry format of undressed web page. "All done," he said, before shifting his attention back to his own computer.

It took a moment for Nico to realise Annabeth was staring at him. When he did, it was to immediately feel his shoulders hunch in defence. "What?"

Slowly, Annabeth shook her head. A small smile tugged at her lips. "Nothing. Just that I sometimes forget you can do stuff like that."

"Like what?"

"Like break through a high-security firewall as though you were going for a walk in the park on a sunny day."

"Easier actually," Nico murmured, deliberately resisting glancing in her direction and flicking through the page before him. "Do you know how exhausting it is to walk around in the sun? Draining."

Annabeth only laughed, her tone abruptly lighter as she fell back to diving into her computer.

Nico was distracted once more a moment later by an incoming message on his phone. Slipping it from his pocket, he frowned down at the screen and the message presented there. Not from Will asking for him to pick him up from New York as he had half expected – and half hoped, because Will was _such_ an idiot. Instead, the momentarily unfamiliar name of Josie Hoggs presented itself. Or at least unfamiliar until he read the message.

 _Report up from Fredricton that there's been an acid spill of some kind. No known cause, and still can't find any explanations for it. More importantly, though, everyone seems to just be forgetting it happened._

 _Mist?_

 _Not sure if it's anything useful but thought I'd let you know if you wanted to check it out._

Ah, yes. Josie. Josie from New Brunswick, met by chance nearly a year ago. She was one of the token mortals that had the clarity to see through the Mist. She was one of the more perceptive of the bunch, too; her suggestions almost always led to a monster, even if it wasn't one of Echidna's children.

Nico didn't like dragging people into his mess. He didn't like the thought of endangering anyone else because of his actions or lack-there-of. But if he was going to deliberately call upon the aid of anyone, it was always better that it was a mortal. They at least were overlooked by monsters in much the same way that a carnivore bypassed trees. On occasion, chance would have them become unnecessarily involved, afflicted by the crazed behaviour of the monsters as they chased their demigod targets, but directly targeted themselves they most certainly were not.

Josie's words could very well be something. If could even potentially be Ladon himself, the hundred-headed dragon recalled for its acid-breath. Technically, Ladon should be unerringly loyal to the Hesperides, guarding the sacred garden and its golden apples like an unsleeping sentinel. But he wasn't. Not anymore, anyway. The compulsion of Echidna's orders had drawn him from his faithful station. Nico knew because he and Hazel had checked that garden long ago.

"What was it?"

Glancing up, Nico was mildly surprised to see Hazel at his shoulder. He hadn't heard her approach, hadn't seen her move from across the room and her sea of snowflake buntings. "What?"

"The message," Hazel asked with a gesture towards the phone in his hand. "Intel?"

Nico shrugged, handing the phone over to her. "Maybe. Not sure. It could be a lead but I don't exactly have high hopes about that kind of thing anymore."

"Yeah," Hazel murmured, eyes trained on the screen. Such was always their way, their exchange of intelligence and leads. Nico and Hazel had long since become open with one another about the messages that they each received from their respective contacts. It had taken time to become so aware, to admit that it would be easier for the both of them if they momentarily put aside their concerns for their sibling and keeping such knowledge a secret and instead pooled their resources. They worked faster, better, that way. "Are you going to head out?"

Nico shrugged then nodded. "Yeah, may as well check it out."

"Aren't you going to wait for Will to come back?"

Pausing with his mouth open to reply, Nico frowned. "Hey, what's with that tone?"

Hazel's frown appeared suddenly forced. No, not forced so much as concealing. Concealing of a spreading smile, Nico realised when it finally drew forth. "Nothing, I just thought you'd rather wait for him."

"And why is that?" Nico said, folding his arms. Hazel was right, of course. He would rather wait for Will, if for no other reason than to make sure he got back from the airport without difficulty. It had nothing to do with the fact that he always felt more comfortable with Will at his side where he could see him, where he was reassured that he wasn't doing something foolish, or reckless, or that he wasn't being hounded by monsters… Of course, Nico wouldn't tell Hazel that. Mostly because he was fairly certain that she already knew his stance on the situation, if for no other reason than that he knew she felt the same way about Frank.

Hazel shrugged nonchalantly in a way that Nico recognised as being more an attempt to mask her true feelings on the matter than true nonchalance. "You just seem to be spending a lot more time around him. Willingly, I mean."

"Is that a problem?"

"No," she said simply. "It makes me happy to see, actually. I'm happy that you're… happy." She reached forwards to tug at his fringe in much the same way that Will seemed inclined to do of late. In the moments before he caught Nico's hair in deft fingers and tied it with a band to draw all but his misshapen fringe from his face, that was. Nico didn't have any particular inclination to wearing his hair as such, but it seemed to make Will happy.

And making Will happy… it was certainly something that Nico was striving for. To make him smile, to make him laugh, to rid him of that Wrong Frown that had afflicted him. And largely, whether by his efforts or by simple circumstance, Nico felt that it was working. Will did smile more. He even laughed, seemed happier, and not only for being caught up in the festive season as the rest of their friends were. Will seemed to glow in a way that Nico had always seen him as doing yet somehow missed that he lacked in the first week that they'd collided their separate lives once more.

Things weren't perfect. They weren't, and Nico didn't expect them to be, and not only because Nico and Will had never been exactly 'perfect' in the first place. Their sort of relationship was the kind that flourished on banter and teasing, on silent acts of affection as often as open displays, on standing at one another's backs in a fight with the same intense loyalty and intimacy that they held one another in privacy. That was simply them, disjointed as it was. It wasn't perfect, not even on the spectrum of 'normal', but it was perfect to Nico. A strange kind of perfection.

They hadn't attained that yet. There was still the uneasiness, the tightly strung nerves that thrummed at the mention of a monster and forbade the casual ease that they by all rights _could_ have assumed. Nico didn't think he could step into such a state, not with the looming threat of Echidna hanging over him, over them.

Maybe in time. In a long time. Until then…

But Hazel thought he was happy? Well, maybe he was? As happy as he had ever been, even, though that happiness was shaded by worry.

Hoping that Hazel didn't see his discomfort for her words, Nico shrugged and took the phone back from her. "I don't think I'll wait for him. Not this time, anyway. He's off with the fairies –"

"You mean the fairies that run his hospital and cure sick and injured people?" Hazel said with another slowly spreading grin.

"Yeah, them. And I am capable of being away from him, you know. Unlike _some_ people I could mention." Nico turned a deliberate gaze towards Frank who was in the act of folding Hazel's buntings into neat piles. He hadn't missed the glances sent their way every few seconds, however, as though Frank still feared after nearly a month back together again that Hazel would disappear if he looked away for too long. It reminded Nico of how Will was sometimes.

 _Only sometimes now, at least, h_ e reminded himself. _I think he's gotten better with that lately. At least, I_ think _he has_. _Maybe I've just gotten used to it._

Hazel's face flushed slightly at Nico's words and she cast a glance over her shoulder at Frank. The smile that spread across Frank's face as he noticed reminded Nico of a puppy whose master had finally seen to sparing it a moment of their attention. He could almost see the lolling tongue and frantically wagging tail. "I'm not that bad," Hazel murmured.

"Have you seen yourself?"

"I'm not that bad!"

"Mmhm," Nico hummed, hooding his eyes and shooting her a smirk. "But in answer to your question once more, no. I think I'll just be heading out myself. In fact," pausing only to click his computer into sleep, he rose to his feet. "I think I might just head out now. This Christmas spirit is giving me a headache."

"Killjoy," Hazel muttered, though she still smiled as she shook her head.

"That's me. I take pride in it too, thank you very much." Nico picked his scarf up from where it was draped over the back of his chair and wrapped it around his neck before adding the jacket on top of it. He didn't really feel the need to use it – true, it was cold, but Nico barely even felt the cold anymore – but Will had asked him to. Practically begged him to, really, when they'd returned from a scouting trip down in Buffalo the week before. He'd wrapped Nico in an embrace so tight that he could barely breath and declared that he wouldn't let him go until he swore he'd wear something more suitable to the weather from now on. Nico would be lying if he said he didn't _maybe_ hold out on agreeing to as much for… particular reasons. Reasons that he was fairly sure Will guessed because he didn't let him go for the rest of the evening even after Nico had agreed.

"I don't think you should go by yourself," Hazel said with an abrupt frown. "Maybe I should go with you?"

Nico turned towards her with a raised eyebrow. "Seriously? How long have we been doing it by ourselves and you worry about going solo _now_?"

Hazel shrugged a little sheepishly. "Well, we don't have to go solo now, do we? We've got the support, whether we like it or not. We may as well use it."

Shaking his head, Nico pretended he didn't see Annabeth's sidelong glance, or that Reyna had paused in the act of affixing another pair of feathers to the timber lengths of her arrows. "You've finally caved."

Hazel scowled, though it was with that faintly sheepish flush still present. "You make it sound like a bad thing."

"I'm not. I'm just stating a fact."

"In the bluntest, most accusing way possible."

"True. But I'm an honest person. What can I say?"

"I'll go with you," Reyna suddenly said, dropping her half-finished arrow onto one of the few remaining spaces left on the workbench. She was already slipping her jacket on and rising to her feet. "Hazel's right. It's better to have back up if you can."

"You don't have to," Nico began.

"Would you like me to come with you too?" Annabeth asked, glancing up from her screen. "The more people that come the safer you'll be. I mean, I know it's harder to shadow travel with more people –"

"It's not that much of a problem, really."

"- but I think you can never have too many pairs of eyes and ears."

Nico shook his head. "No, it's okay. You just do your thing. Reyna and I are fine." He realised he'd already accepted Reyna's accompaniment without deliberate thought but the consideration. That was just how it was with Reyna.

Annabeth, as usual, didn't let an idea die when it had taken root, however. "I would like to come, but I am sort of in the middle of something…" Then she raised herself slightly in her seat and lifted her voice to bellow across the room. "Hey! Anyone feel like a break to go with Nico and Reyna on a scout?"

Nico rolled his eyes, dropping his head into a raised hand. "That's really unnecessary –"

"Oh dear Gods, please," Thalia said, already charging across the room and snatching up her bow from where it leant against the couch as she went. Her expression looked slightly crazed, as though the Christmas fever really was driving her up the walls. "I've stung myself on enough pine needles to last me a lifetime."

"I'll come too," Calypso volunteered. Nico wasn't surprised in the least in that regard. She hastily stripped herself of her tinsel adornments, much to Piper's grumbled objections. The glance she cast towards Nico was that of a drowning man towards a sailing boat. " _Please_."

Shaking his head, fighting back the surprising urge to smile, Nico turned towards the door. "Whatever suits you."

"Cowards! You're weak!" Leo called after them. "Caving under the pressure!"

"If you're not done by the time we get back, I'm challenging you all to a duel," Thalia declared. "Jason, you're in charge."

"Why's Jason get to be in charge?" Percy asked, poking his head out from around the tree. "He's put all of one bauble on the tree. We'll never get it done if he's our coordinator."

"There's nothing wrong with enjoying the journey rather than the destination," Jason said with a note of quotation in his voice. Who he was quoting Nico had no idea. "Besides, it's been _two_ baubles…"

Their voices faded as Nico stepped out the door, turning towards the three young women – well, two women and one girl – that followed him. They were all smiling in varying degrees of relief, exasperation and amusement, Reyna offering a slight whistle to call Aurum and Argentum to heel. She never brought her two loyal guard dogs with them on anything but scouting missions, sending them away at the slightest sign of danger; their near destruction years ago had stuck with her fiercely and her worry had always persisted. "Ready to head off?" Nico asked.

"Anything just to get away," Thalia muttered, casting an almost fearful glance over her shoulder at the cabin. A bark of laughter – Nico thought it belonged to sounded like Leo's – echoed even through the closed door. "Where are we going, even?"

"Fredricton. New Brunswick."

"Joy," she said with a shake of her head. "Even colder." But then a slightly devilish smile spread across her face. "Good-o. I love to fight monsters in the snow. Let's go!"

Nico didn't need to be told twice. The second the trio of hands latched onto his arms, he drew them from the cabin-side and the general air of Christmas festivity. Nico couldn't say he was particularly sad to leave but then… not exactly as relieved as he had expected either.

Some things did appear to have changed that much at all. He'd never liked Christmas, but… he didn't really have to. There were more than enough people around him to make up it.


	12. Chapter 12 - Unearthing

**Chapter 12: Unearthing**

 _"It's intellectual. Emotional. It comes before the physical relationship for me."_

 _"Intellectual alright, but what if she looks like a dog? You'd be having an intellectual relationship with a dog."_

Will snorted in a muffled chuckle. He'd seen _The Intouchables_ numerous times before but it could still make him laugh. A 'feel-good film', his mother had always called it, and he watched it for just that reason. It was a good way to wind down after a long day, or simply to relax after a scouting mission. Will felt it appropriate following the exertion of monster hunting that he and Nico had been engaged in that morning. Three hours they'd wandered through a forest in search of any sign of Ladon that they could find and, though monsters they had come across, _the_ monster had remained distinctly absent.

"You know, it worries me that you laugh at that."

Glancing to his side, Will plucked unconsciously at Nico's shoulder. He was leaning into him, back to shoulder with his legs extended along the couch and typing ridiculously fast upon his computer without any evident attention spared to what his fingers were doing. Will loved the fact that Nico leant against him, that he _chose_ to lean against him, even if it was more likely that he simply used him as a backrest than for any pursuit of contact. A month ago he wouldn't have even allowed that. "What?"

Nico gestured with a sideways nod towards the television without looking up from his screen. "That's kind of derogatory, don't you think?"

Frowning quizzically, Will reached up to tap the top of Nico's head. Nico swatted his fingers away. "You weren't watching it, were you?"

"No, but it's a little hard to ignore it with how loud you've got it turned up."

"I don't think it's that loud," Percy said from the armchair positioned at an angle to their two seater. He lay sprawled sideways, legs hooked over the arm and back to the television with his eyes trained instead upon his phone as he thumbed at the screen. "To be honest, I think Jason and Piper are the louder out of the two."

Will took a moment to glance towards the window and the sight of Jason and Piper shouting and laughing to one another as they play-practiced duelling. It looked distinctly more play than practice. Then he turned his attention back towards Nico with a raised eyebrow. "What I meant was that I didn't think you were actually watching the screen."

"I wasn't."

"Then how do you even know what they were saying. It's in French."

"Wonderful powers of deduction you've got there, Will," Nico drawled, tapping away at his keyboard as though he barely attended to their conversation. What was he even doing? It looked like an encrypted file of sorts. "It only took you half a movie to figure that out."

Will paused, staring at Nico expectantly. When he gave no further reply, Will tapped his head once more. "Well then, how? You don't speak -"

"I know French well enough."

Silenced, Will stared. Across the room, Percy, the only other person within hearing distance with Annabeth, Reyna and Thalia seated around the dining table and the rest on scouting missions, glanced up from his phone. A bemused expression settled on his face. "No, you don't. That's Italian, man."

"No shit, really? I speak Italian too?" Nico sounded thoroughly bored, as though he barely even heard Percy's words at all. He had yet to glance up from his screen. "I knew people in American sounded different to how they did in Italy."

"No need to be sarcastic," Percy sighed with a shake of his head, though a smile was stretching across his face.

"Have you met me? Sarcasm is practically my entire personality."

Will smiled at that. Not because it was necessarily true – although to a degree it most certainly was – but because Nico was acting like _Nico_. He was more like he had been, how Will remembered him from the past, then he'd been in a long time. Not the same, and Will doubted he ever would be entirely the same. He wasn't even sure if he wanted Nico to be, not after everything that had happened. But Nico's reservedness had lessened, the constant withdrawal and pain upon his face almost faded entirely most of the time. He spoke more, teased more, didn't seem to fear that every second in the presence of his friends, of Will, could be their last. Will found that he almost liked being insulted, good-naturedly as it was. And in a different way to the amusement that he'd always felt for Nico's attitude.

Christmas had come and gone with a flurry of festive excitement, with the exchange of gifts that were more novelty-based that useful, and a riot of activity, childish games and over-loud cries of conversation and bursts of laughter that had left them all in a state of exhaustion at the end of the day. They'd spent breakfast together before most sought their relatives for lunch, and returned to one another's company in the afternoon for another round of excitement that put Will more in mind of teenagers than the young adults they all were. Not that he wasn't a primary contributor himself, of course.

Will had gone to see his mother. More than that, he had taken Nico to see his mother. Nico had been reluctant at first but that reluctance had faded into struggling acceptance when Will had told him that Naomi knew. Not that he had told her but that she'd guessed, a reality which had rendered Nico's arguments moot. Not that he hadn't still been worried, and jittery, and uneasy to a degree that, when he had demanded that they shadow travel to New York, Will had bowed his head in allowance for once. He didn't even argue about it.

Will was glad they'd gone. Nico hadn't cried when he'd seen Naomi, but there was definitely a surfacing of some deep, sorrowful emotions within his expression. And when Naomi had wrapped him wordlessly in an embrace he'd let her. He'd actually looked like he'd… no, enjoyment was an exaggeration, but he hadn't hated it.

Will spared a brief moment of attention for the room at large, for the Christmas tree that still stood propped in the corner of the room sagging beneath its glaring decorations, to the odd strips of wrapping paper that still protruded from hidey-holes, to the fairy lights that adorned the window sills inside and out. No, Will hadn't been one much for Christmas over the past few years, but now? He was very glad that his enthusiasm had returned in droves. He would be more than happy to admit that he was one of the primary encouragers for their Christmas games, leading the way with bad jokes and eggnog much to Nico's eye-rolling exasperation yet discernible amusement. Will wouldn't lie, he'd done most of what he had to elicit such a response. Most of what he did these days revolved around Nico, which might not be exactly healthy but…

Frowning down at Nico, he tapped his head to subsequent swatting once more. "Since when have you been able to speak French? Did Hazel teach you?" He wouldn't have put it past them to do an exchange of language tutelage over the past three years. They had to do something in their downtime, right?

"Mm," Nico hummed, pausing to frown at his computer for a moment before his fingers whipped into flight once more. "About five years ago."

Will blinked. "Five? You learnt _five_ years ago?"

"Yeah."

"You just decided to pick up French one day and didn't think to tell me?" Will said accusingly. They'd still been together at that point. Why hadn't Nico told him? The thought stung.

Nico only shrugged. "It didn't seem relevant at the time. To anything. Why would I need to tell you?"

"Maybe because I'd want to know? Because I like to know what goes on with you?" Will could feel his frown deepening without his consent. Why didn't Nico tell him these sort of things? He'd thought they'd shared practically everything in the past.

"I don't know," Nico muttered, still with his half-distracted attention. "Probably for the same reason that you went and got your barista training and didn't tell me."

Will opened his mouth to retort but clamped it closed an instant later. His barista training had been a spur of the moment idea, something driven by his not-so-secret-anymore inclination towards the beverage itself. He'd attempted to keep his guilty habit to himself given that he didn't entirely approve of such behaviours but a habit it had become, and though not quite addicted, Will would admit that at times he really did use caffeine as a crutch.

The only words that managed to slip between his lips probably weren't an entirely suitable response. "How did you even find out about that?"

Finally Nico glanced up from his computer to give Will a faintly reproving stare. "Because Annabeth knew – of course she did, she practically lives off the stuff – and blurted it out by accident about three weeks ago." Shaking his head he turned once more back to the computer in his lap. "Good job keeping it a secret, by the way. And I thought that you'd get pissed at _me_ for making a habit out of drinking it."

Across the room Percy gave a muffled snort of laughter. He hadn't raised his eyes from his phone but Will didn't need him to in order to know what he was attending to. "Yes, hilarious, Percy. It's _your_ girlfriend that routed me out."

"Your fault," Percy replied.

"Don't you have any sort of contribution to Annabeth's actions?"

Percy did finally glance up at that, his eyebrows rising incredulously. "Have you met Annabeth? I have barely a word of input in anything when it comes to her about _me_ even."

"Walkover," Nico muttered, just loud enough to be heard.

"No, correction," Percy said, raising a finger. "I know when it's safer to just roll over without a fuss."

"And play dead," Nico said in another murmur. "Like a dog. A well-trained dog."

"Are you calling me a dog?"

"I believe that's what I just said."

"Hey, weren't you the one who just told me off for laughing when the movie literally _just_ saying that?" Will asked, frown alleviated briefly to a smile as Percy threw a pillow at Nico's head.

Nico batted the missile away with a kick that didn't jostle his computer in his lap in the slightest. "Yeah, but you're supposed to be the nice one out of the two of us. You don't do things like that."

"I really have no idea where you get that idea from," Will said with a shake of his head. It wasn't the first time he'd been labelled as such by Nico.

"Um, maybe the fact that you're training to save people's lives?" Percy suggested.

"Thank you, Percy," Nico said before chucking the pillow back towards him in a decidedly thankless manner. The throw looked brutal. "There you go, Will. Maybe some dogs really are capable of intelligent conversation."

"I resent that. I'm not a dog."

"Mm, you are. One of those water spaniel dogs."

"The ones with the curly hair?"

"Yep."

Percy grinned, as though he was quite taken with the suggested likeness. "Well, I could think of worse comparisons."

Nico glanced up from his screen to shoot Percy a hooded stare. A long, silent stare for a moment in which Percy only grinned back at him like a puppy taunting a cat. Then Nico shook his head. "You're an idiot."

"Thank you. I try."

"It wasn't a compliment."

"Really? From you I would have thought it was."

Will watched the back and forth banter with his smile widening, completely ignoring the movie that still played. It was testament to just how much Nico had relaxed, if not completely than significantly, that he was comfortable enough to engage in such an exchange with Percy. More than that, that he was able to sit with relative ease upon the couch without feeling the incessant need to be _doing_ something. Even if that 'ease' was to surf for leads on his computer. Things were almost… normal. Will was comfortable. Except that…

Tapping Nico's head once more as he and Percy finally subsided, he leaned down to his ear to murmur in a semblance of privacy. Not that he had any problem with Percy overhearing or anything but it did feel sort of personal. "I'd like to know, you know."

"Hm?"

"If you learn something. Or do something. Anything." Will shrugged. "I'd like to know just because." _I'd like to know everything._

Nico actually paused in his typing to glance at Will sidelong. Will wondered if he understood the depth of his request, of his desire. The lack of derision in his expression, the thoughtfulness in its place, suggested he might just have a suspicion. He tilted his head slightly, curiously. "You too."

Will stared back at him. Well. He supposed he sort of deserved that. In an instant he made the resolution to tell Nico about all of his passing fancies, even the guilty ones. With a decisive nod, he settled himself back comfortably into his seat and turned back towards the movie. Percy fell back to flicking through his phone and Nico at typing away on his computer. It was quiet and comfortable but for the movie's dialogue, the murmurs from the workbench and the cries of laughter and amused indignation from Jason and Piper outside.

Until the peace was shattered moments later. In a swirl of shadow in the centre of the living room, Hazel appeared. Hazel, alone when she should have had Frank, Leo and Calypso with her. Her eyes were flared widely, jacket torn askew and her ponytail braid looked to have been half tugged from its tie in a crazed mess. She was wavering on her feet, panting as though she'd run a dozen miles, though the fear that swum in her gaze suggested it was for a different matter entirely.

She didn't acknowledge anyone else in the room. The second Hazel regained enough breath to speak, she blurted out a frantic, slightly hysterical cry. "Nico, I need –"

Nico was on his feet almost before she spoke, computer actually clattering to the ground. Without waiting for further explanation, he was across the room and grabbing his sister's arm. There was a pause only for the words "Go" before Hazel struggled to draw forth her own shadows and they disappeared into darkness.

Will hadn't realised he'd thrown himself after Nico until he skidded to a stop in the place they'd been but moments before. A volt of fear shot through him because _Nico had gone, he'd just left without saying anything!_ though for a different reason than the panic that usually drove him. Nico wasn't _leaving_ him, but he had left and evidently leapt straight into danger. Hazel's desperation had been thick in just three words if not for the speed with which she'd appeared then disappeared once more.

Whipping his head around towards Percy, who had similarly sprung to his feet, he met his eyes. Percy's were darkened with worry, a wide-eyed frown vanquishing any remaining traces of good-humour from his expression. "What…?"

Will only shook his head. He turned on the spot, panic rapidly settling upon him and shortening his breath. He didn't know where Nico had gone, what danger he'd charged into because it had definitely been a threat. Were Hazel and her party in trouble? Had something happened? Had they found something? Surely Hazel would have called for backup more extensive than just Nico if they'd found Ladon, or the sphinx, or the Giant Eagle, wouldn't she? And why had it just been Hazel? Will knew she wasn't as capable of shadow travel as Nico was, that she required far more time and concentration to move even herself from one place to another, let alone more than one person. What did it mean that it had been _just_ Hazel to have returned, if only briefly?

The torrent of questions in Will's mind clamoured for attention as he hastened towards the dining table with Percy on his tail. The three women seated within the room had started at Hazel's sudden appearance, each wearing expressions of varying degrees of surprise, concern, confusion and fear. Will snapped his gaze around all of them, faintly desperate, and opened his mouth to speak. He was cut off though, silenced by Piper's cry from outside that wasn't amused even in the slightest.

None of them had time to rush to the door. There was no time to hasten outside, to see what was wrong. An instant later the front door of the cabin burst inwards and Leo charged inside, Nico, Hazel and Frank on his tail. Piper and Jason hastened after them, the front door falling closed with a loud slam.

Will barely noticed that. He barely noticed any of it but to see that Nico had returned, that he was alright and didn't appear any the worse for wear for whatever had happened. And even that was only briefly realised before his attention fell upon Calypso in Leo's arms.

She was a mess. A broken, bleeding and filthy mess. Her winter clothes looked like they'd been torn to shreds on her frame with little care for the skin beneath, barely more than rags remaining. The skin that was visible beneath the rags, beneath smears of dark, congealing blood, was far too pale, bruises already arising like the spots of a Dalmatian. A quick scan, conducted by the part of Will's mind that remained rational and cataloguing in critical situations, noticed broken fingers, a swelling upon Calypso's forehead that was concerning both in placement and its growing size, an ankle that was twisted sickeningly and the attached foot a crushed mess. She was a disaster, like a victim of a car accident, though Will sincerely doubted it was a vehicle she'd collided with.

That was all he had time to register. That only, before Leo charged towards him in a stagger, eyes blown wide and terrified beneath a shallow gash that spilled blood into his eyebrows. "Will! Help!"

Will sprung into action.

Healing was what Will did best. It had always been what he was best at, more than music or archery or any other kind of combat. He was a medic through and through, and it was what he loved. That love, that feeling of purpose, was only secondary in his mind, barely even considered as he hastened to urge Leo to the nearest bedroom and place Calypso reverentially but frantically upon the unmade bed. Will immediately pushed him away from his patient – it was a struggle, but Will was determined – and narrowed his focus to his act of healing.

His patient. That was what Calypso immediately became. Not anything more or less than what she already was to him, but simply different. Clinical. And Will fell into his doctoring mode. Without caring who acted upon his orders, he called out over his shoulder. "I need nectar and ambrosia here. Boiled water, my first aid kit, and someone call for Kayla and Austin. Please," he barely had the thought to add, before he turned back towards Calypso and the bloody stain she was already seeping onto the bed. Her eyes were closed in unconsciousness, her breathing shallow but still there. And that was all the urging Will need: she was still breathing, hadn't gone into cardiac arrest, and damaged as she was that was better than the alternative.

He fell to his triaged healing.

The injuries. Of them all, apart from the blood loss, the head injury was the worst. The head injury, likely a grade three concussion for her unconsciousness, and the broken ribs that would inhibit Calypso's breathing. _Then I'll just to fix that,_ a faintly sarcastic voice in the back of his head muttered. Reaching forwards, fingers gentle and steady in spite of the flutter of concern struggling in his chest, Will placed a hand upon Calyspo's head, his other softly upon her chest. And with a deep breath and closed eyes he began to sing.

 _"Hear me, you who posses deep-wooded Helicon,_

 _Fair-armed daughters of Zeus the magnificent._

 _Fly to beguile with your accents your brother,_

 _Golden-tressed Phoebus who, on the twin peak of this rock of Parnassus…"_

From his hands, Will felt warmth ripple across his skin. Warmth and light that he knew arose even though he kept his eyes closed from seeing it. He didn't open the, couldn't, for to do so would be to distract himself from the song. More importantly, it would distract him from the focus of his mindset, the steady intention at the forefront of his thoughts, that chanted of that which he most needed to heal.

 _Head – remedy the damage to the skull and the brain, to the central nervous system and cerebral fluid. Chest – ease the strain upon the heart, slow the blood rate, rejuvenate and replenish that which has been lost. Ribs – knit the broken, seal the fractures that splinter, inflate and stabilise the cavity of the diaphragm…_

It was the way of vitakinesis. Oftentimes, Apollo's healing would require little more than a musical hum, the focused intention that took barely a thought to rectify the injury. But Calypso was damaged, was sorely injured and broken. She would need more than that. She would need all that Will could give her.

 _"And all the host of poets, dwellers in Attica, sing your glory,_

 _Famed for playing the kithara, son of great Zeus,_

 _Beside this snow-crowned peak, oh you who reveal to all mortals,_

 _The eternal and infallible oracles…"_

Apollo's gift of healing, bestowed upon some of his children, was invoked by song. Will was not a singer; he could hold a tune well enough, could play a guitar or piano adequately, but he was not _gifted_. Not like Austin, nor even as much as Kayla. Yet even linked as music and healing was, and lacking in the former as he _definitely_ was, Will lived and breathed healing. Calling upon his gift, invoking the strength of his father the god to mend that which was broken, was exhausting, physically taxing as well as mentally straining. But Will could do it. It was the main reason he'd been appointed head counsellor of the cabin all those years ago.

What better invocation that the _Hymn to Apollo_? It wasn't exactly a classic, not an ancient ode to the god himself, but Apollo favoured it. He favoured just about anything that preached of his greatness. Less narcissistic though he may be after his time as a mortal, he was still egotistical, even more so after prolonged exposure to himself solely. If there was anything that would draw upon the gift of Apollo's healing it was a song directly to him.

So Will sang. He sang, and he intended and he healed. From his hands, warm and seeping, he felt the fractures, the damage, the _wrongness_ of it, a wrongness that Will felt compelled, had always felt compelled, to fix. He didn't see Calypso, and he didn't even see his patient. He just saw and injury that he _must_ fix.

On the edges of his awareness, Will registered the Leo stood across from him on the other side of the bed. He knew that Nico had positioned himself silently and unobtrusively at his shoulder, just as he knew that Percy was the one who brought him the boiled water faster than it should have been possible to heat it, that Thalia brought him his first aid kit with lightning speed and Piper was on her phone to call Kayla and Austin immediately. He barely responded to their actions, however, but to accept the water, the first aid kit, the words of reassurance from Piper that they were already nearly home, just as he ignored Leo's frantic words as he babbled on the verge of mania, clutching at his forehead and panting in terror more than exhaustion.

Will kept his head bowed, hands warm and glowing and seeping his healing energy from his fingertips as he continued to speak. And when he felt the thrumming warmth of response, the musical chiming of the body beneath his attentions draw breath and follow his direction to fix itself, he set about cleaning up the rest of the injuries. To administering a square of ambrosia and a dab of nectar where it counted. He wiped at congealed blood, sprayed with antiseptic, draped with dressing pads and gauze swabs and wrapped in bandages. It was mechanical, automatic. Will hardly had to think about what he was doing. There was not even a hint of emotional investment, cool focus entirely encompassing him as his hands continued to glow and he kept on singing. He worried for his friend, for the young woman lying unconscious upon the bed, but he didn't feel that worry. Not in the slightest.

On the edges of his awareness Will could hear the rest of his friends speaking. Only in broken words, hushed and worried, fearful and demanding to know what had happened.

"…found it…?"

"…more prepared than we'd expected…"

"How did she…?"

"…swiped when she tried to help me… just went for her."

Concern thrummed through the room, most powerfully from Leo across the bed. Will only spared him half a glance when he finally fell to his knees at the bedside. His face was crumpled in an expression so vastly different from the Leo that he _always_ was that he appeared almost a different person entirely. The cut upon his forehead had slowed in its throbbing bleeding yet the smear of blood still masked half of his face.

 _Someone should tend to that_ , Will considered objectively, distantly, before he turned back to Calypso and the feeling of the magic thrumming through his hands.

Slowly, though he worked oh-so-slowly, Will felt himself swim back into awareness. When the song died on his lips, when the last of the healing magic faded with a hum of satisfaction and achievement, Will allowed himself to sag slightly as he continued to dress Calypso's wounds. The voices of his friends grew with clarity, hardened as the immediate fear died with the sight of Calypso's healing.

"It was definitely Ladon?"

"How many other hundred-headed dragons do you know?" That sounded like Frank, surprisingly harsh and sarcastic for him. Will didn't even need to glance over his shoulder to discern the worry that would be writ across his face, driving the coarseness of his tone.

"I was just checking," Piper murmured. "There's no need to snap at me."

Frank sighed. "I know. I'm sorry, I'm just… we thought we were done for. Would have been if not for Leo's fireworks display."

Will glanced towards Leo at the mention of him. Leo didn't even seem to have noticed. He'd reached to grasp Calypso's hand, his eyes trained unblinkingly upon her unconscious face. If a simple gaze could heal as well as Will's song, he was certain that the force of Leo's would have had Calypso springing to her feet as good as new and dancing a jig. Not that she would ever deign to dance as such, but…

"It was there, though?" Annabeth asked, her voice quite yet devoid of the weary concern of her friends'. It was so like Annabeth to be able to shunt aside her worries temporarily to focus upon the facts. "It was in the ruins?"

"Yes," Hazel murmured. "Ladon and most of his children, I'd wager."

"Then at least we know we were right," Annabeth muttered, likely more to herself than to anyone in particular.

Surprisingly it was Thalia who spoke in reprimand of Annabeth's words. "Hey, a little sympathy wouldn't go astray."

Annabeth blinked. "Wha -? Oh, sorry, no, I didn't mean –"

"We know you didn't mean anything cruel by it," Percy overrode her. "Don't we, Thalia?"

"Yes, Dad."

"Please don't liken me to your dad. If anything I'm a water spaniel."

"You're a what?"

Will couldn't help the slight smile from touching his lips at Percy's words, at the remarkably light-hearted and joking conversation that followed in spite of the situation. Or perhaps because of it. To his diagnostic senses Will could discern that Calypso would be alright, that though she might not awaken for another day or two – a by-product of the energy demands such a healing placed upon the body – she would be completely fine when her cuts and bruises all patched themselves up. That and the remaining breaks in her foot that Will hadn't seen to yet.

Sliding along the length of the bed, Will nearly tumbled to the floor at a sudden upwelling of dizziness that swam through him. He caught himself on the bed before he fell on his face, though he needn't have worried for Nico was at his side in an instant, holding him steady. Will flashed him a small smile of gratitude, one which rebounded off the faint reprimand in Nico's dark, frowning eyes.

"You know," he muttered too quietly to be heard by anyone but Will. "You could ask for some help."

"No one else could heal her," Will whispered back, glancing over his shoulder at the rest of their friends as they spoke amongst themselves with varying degrees of continued concern. From what he could tell only Reyna appeared to have noticed that he had nearly collapsed and he trusted her to know to keep her mouth shut.

"Yeah, but it doesn't take a surgeon to know how to put on a Band-Aid or strap a foot. You need to learn when you've maxed yourself out."

"That sounds familiar," Will said with a sidelong glance.

Nico ignored his pointed stare, glancing briefly towards their friends. "My situation is different."

"What, so when you exhaust yourself with shadow-travel that's different to my tiredness from healing?"

"Yes. Very different."

"How do you figure?"

"Because, you stupid Quack," Nico said with a sigh as, before Will even realised what he was doing, he had manoeuvred him into sitting with a semblance of steadiness upon the edge of the bed. "You do yours for altruistic reasons. Mine are entirely selfish."

"They are not."

"Yes, they are."

"You might be able to fool yourself but you can't fool me," Will said with another weary smile. His panic had died with Nico return to be replaced by concern for Calypso, which had similarly rapidly died when he'd fallen into his familiar motions. The tension in the room was still palpable, though from what he had made out of the conversation between his friends he suspected it was driven as much by the contemplation of Ladon's discovery and the encroaching fight as anything. Calypso was fine. She _would_ be fine. Will was vaguely heartened to know that they all felt such confidence in his healing abilities to no longer worry overtly about her state, with Leo as the only exception.

Nico have a huff and a murmur of something beneath his breath that Will couldn't hear. Holding him fast on the shoulder to preventing him from moving a step further, Nico alleviated Will of the splint and bandages he held and moved towards Calypso's feet. With practiced fingers, and as little queasiness that Will felt when seeing to a broken ankle, he eased her foot back into place with delicate fingers and began to strap it.

"Who taught you to do that?" Will murmured curiously, his weariness soothing slightly as soon as he'd seated himself upon the edge of the bed.

Nico paused briefly and met Will's eyes across the bed. They may as well have been the only two people in the room for the fact that Will hardly even perceived the presence of anyone else, talking or otherwise. Nico gave a slight smile that for once held not a hind of derision. "You did," he said quietly. And then he smirked. "Idiot. Who else do you think I would have learned from?"

Will blinked in surprise. He hadn't expressly taught Nico anything, but then, he considered, Nico was far from dumb or unobservant. He'd been with Will enough in the infirmary and the Apollo cabin for him to have seen more than a handful of such doctoring administrations. Shaking his head with a small smile of his own, Will watched as Nico's deft fingers worked in motions that his own knew too well.

They left Calypso's room when she was as wrapped up and healed as she possibly could be, Nico under Will's direction draping a thin sheet across her that wouldn't lay undue pressure upon her wounds. All of them except Leo, that was, who seemed determined to stay at her bedside until she woke up. No one objected to him remaining behind.

By the time they'd all pooled out in the living area, Kayla and Austin had arrived and, given that Will was largely wrung dry by his rapid and unexpected bout of vitakinesis, they set about to fixing the less critical wounds that adorned Hazel and Frank. Austin disappeared briefly to see to Leo, though returned with such promptness that Will suspected Leo had been less than obliging to Austin's request to tend to his injuries. He likely hadn't even noticed Austin at all.

They settled themselves in a ring of couches and dining chairs, sitting and standing to face one another in a mimic of a conference. Percy mutely switched off the television that Will had forgotten was still running, plunging the room into momentary silence.

Annabeth, typically, was the first to speak. "So. We've found another one."

Hazel and Frank nodded as though her words had been a question. Hazel folded her arms across her chest as she leaned back in her seat, frowning. "Yes. And it's going to be a hard one."

"More so than the rest we've – that you've faced so far?" Piper asked.

Hazel nodded slowly, turning a glance towards Nico. "We knew they'd get more powerful the longer we took to defeat them."

Will saw Nico's eyes harden slightly before he dropped his gaze to the floor. Will regarded him silently from his seat, though the chiding that he wouldn't speak – not anymore – rose in his mind. _And you were going to try and fight them all by yourself? How did you possibly think you'd survive that?_

Reprimanding as he might think, however, Will wouldn't speak the words aloud. He didn't need to, for though Nico and Hazel maintained their concerns for the rest of them, Will hadn't heard either speak of continuing alone for a long time. He knew the idea wasn't completely absented from their mutual thoughts, but their silence and inactivity on the matter was telling enough.

"So it's a matter of time," Jason said. "The faster we move the better. You did say that a while ago."

Hazel nodded. "We've suspected it for a while now. That we have to move quickly. And not only because we…" She trailed off, casting another glance towards Nico that he didn't return this time. Will thought he could discern her silenced words anyway, however: _Because we didn't want to be alone any longer than we had to be._ Hazel at least was a little more open in her acknowledgement of loneliness than Nico was.

"So that's what we'll do," Thalia spoke up. She slouched back with apparent ease in the couch, a leg slinging over the arm and nearly elbowing Reyna at her side. "Grab the bull by the horns and dive right in."

"You're mixing metaphors there," Reyna said quietly.

"Whatever," Thalia replied, waving Reyna's words aside and nearly smacking her in the face. Reyna frowned. "That's the plan though, right? Head over there as fast as possible?"

Annabeth glanced towards Nico, then Hazel. "It depends, I guess. On how ready we'd be to leave. If you're rested enough –"

"I can take us whenever you want to go," Nico predictably assured her. "It would depend more upon everybody else's readiness."

"I'd suggest maybe taking at least a day to sleep on it," Kayla said.

"Didn't we just say we shouldn't wait?" Thalia said with a frown.

Kayla frowned right back at her. "Yes, but in case you haven't noticed, we have several injured people in our midst. If we want to be at our best to actually defeat Ladon and his – her, its, whatever – _the_ offspring alive, we need to be at our best. Not to mention, the better we are going into the fight the less time we'll need to recover."

"The relevance of that being…?"

"We don't know when we'll have to face the others. Better that we give those healing a chance for the ambrosia to fully take effect."

Piper leaned forwards in her perch on the arm of Jason's chair. "I take it that the lead I gave you on the sphinx turned up nothing, then?"

Kayla nodded. "Not a scrap of fur or a feather in sight."

"Brilliant," Piper said with a sigh. "I really thought this one might have been an actual lead."

"I wouldn't beat yourself up about it," Percy said, leaning slightly into Annabeth at his side. "Sounds like the sphinx might be laying false leads."

"False leads?" Jason asked, slightly incredulous. At Percy nod he closed his eyes for a moment and shook his head. "Well, I guess the sphinx always was a smart one."

"You can say that again," Percy muttered from his position standing beside Reyna's seat, to which Annabeth nodded fervently in agreement. Will frowned curiously. There seemed to be a story behind that, though he wasn't entirely sure what it could be. He knew they'd faced the sphinx before but…

"Alright then," Thalia spoke up once more. "How about we sleep, and then head out tomorrow all bows shooting?"

"I believe the correct term is 'all guns blazing'," Reyna corrected her quietly from her side.

"You just love raining on my parade, don't you?"

"I do quite enjoy it, yes."

"I can see that."

"Calypso won't be ready to for at least another couple of days," Will said, leaning forwards slightly to draw the attention from Thalia and Reyna's exchange. He didn't think he expressly needed the seat when seating itself was scarce but Nico had insisted in that wordless way he did. "And if I'd hazard a guess, I'd suppose that Leo wouldn't be inclined to leaving her side anytime soon either."

"Which takes two out of play for our party," Jason murmured.

Piper nudged him with her shoulder. "You can hardly blame him for wanting to stay behind."

"I'm not. I'm just laying it out there."

"Probably three, actually," Austin said. He exchanged a glance with Will. "After a healing of any kind that's pretty huge it's always better to keep a pair of medical eyes upon the patient."

Annabeth nodded. "Fair enough. Three then." She turned towards Will. "Would you be able to…?"

She trailed off with an expression of understanding crossing her face before Will even knew what it was she was realising. Then he registered the fear that welled within him, the abrupt dissent and urge to object that had already opened his mouth and pushed him further upright in his seat. No. No, Will couldn't stay behind. He wouldn't. He needed to be there to make sure that everyone was okay, to make sure that _Nico_ was okay and to administer medical support to anyone who needed it.

Before he could work himself up further, however, Austin spoke once more. "I'll stay behind if it's necessary." He spared another glance for Will, for Kayla, before shrugging. "I don't think it's any secret that out of the three of us I'm probably the least combat focused in my skills."

"Music was always your thing," Kayla agreed with a nod.

Austin drew his glance around the room at large. "Not that I want to stay behind exactly –"

"Sure you don't, Lake," Percy said with a teasing smile. "Skimping out on the danger and action, are we?"

"Oh, are we allowed to do that now?" Kayla asked. "Because if so, sign me up. I'd be more than happy to sit this one out."

"You and me both," Frank said quietly and just a little too heartfelt. "Ladon… Ladon't terrifying. And huge."

"Good to know," Kayla said with a wince, though her voice lacked any hint of uneasiness, entirely giving her game away.

"Like you'd ever actually choose to stay behind, Kayla," Will said, turning towards his sister with a small smile. "When have you ever wanted to miss out on the action?"

"True. I'd much rather watch from the sidelines, though."

"Is that why you favour the bow, then?" Reyna asked with an expression of deceptively mild curiosity. "I just thought it was because you were a daughter of Apollo."

"I don't like what you're insinuating about archers," Thalia grumbled, deliberately contacting Reyna with her elbow this time. "Let me tell you, an arrow strikes with more accuracy the closer you are –"

"Naturally," Reyna nodded.

"- and I happen to strive for the greatest accuracy."

"Well, we can't all be as brave as you, now, can we?"

Thalia opened her mouth to reply before closing it and shooting Reyna a half-glare. Will considered she didn't know whether to be irritated or flattered by the condescending compliment.

Annabeth, ever the one to say on track, chose that moment to clap her hands and draw the attention of everyone in the room. "Alright, then. That's what we'll do. Everyone, I think this sounds like a cause for early retirement."

"It's mid afternoon," Percy pointed out.

Annabeth nodded as though he were supporting her suggestion. "Meaning we'll have all the more time to sleep and get up early."

At Percy's groan and mutter about early morning fights to the death, Piper spoke up. "I'll cook us a storm for an early dinner. Energy food and all that. Sound good?"

Piper's offer seemed to lighten the mood perceptibly. With a chorus of appreciation, everyone flowed into action to spread from the relative formality of the meeting. The heavy mood seemed to have lifted slightly, even with the prospect of what they were facing the next day settling upon the horizon.

Catching a glimpse of Hazel across the room, however, then glancing to Nico at his side, Will revisited his speculation. Both wore identical expressions of determination, of hardness lacking entirely in good-humour. They were focused, intent in the way that they appeared to fall into whenever the prospect of confronting a monster arose. Will felt his smile die at the sight.

For Nico, for Hazel, this wasn't just another battle with a monster. This was a fight to the death – to the ultimate death for Ladon – and to confront one who was set upon destroying them to its last breath.

How could one possibly think positively in the face of such a reality?

* * *

For anyone interested, the song Will sung is the _First Delphic Hymn to Apollo._ Just as an aside and all that jazz :)


	13. Chapter 13 - Riddling

A/N: Hi everyone! Just wanted to leave my customary note before the chapter and offer what has become something of a regular thanks to readers and reviewers. Thanks especially to **LittleBrawley** ; you're such a gem for your continual and heart-warming reviews. And don't worry, we're all Solangelo trash here ;)

Hope you like the chapter. I guess I sort of apologise for it, but I have a bit of a thing for trivia and riddles so... yeah...

* * *

 **Chapter 13: Riddling**

 _Join us… come and join us._

 _Please help me._

 _Listen to me… Hear me…_

Nico forcibly shunted aside the questing thoughts, the grasping fingers of shadows and the ghosts tugging demandingly at his consciousness. It happened each time he took sole control of the shadow travelling, of transporting their entire party by himself. Nico never told anyone how taxing it was; he didn't want them to know. Not even Hazel and certainly not Will. It wouldn't last, the thoughts failing to linger when he'd drawn them from the shadows and regained his senses. Tired he would be, yes, but it was better that he was tired than anyone else, than his sister, before they had to face Ladon. Besides, he could manage. He was always tired in some way or another. It was nothing he couldn't handle.

The shadows dissipated like clinging black clouds, leaving them standing in a pool of disrupted snow and breathing collective plumes of white fog into the air. It was colder out in the open, in an area largely devoid of denser forestry, and Nico found himself almost – _almost_ – feeling the chill through his jacket and the scarf that he tugged over his chin. He glanced around himself, taking in the stretches of largely untouched and unbroken snow, the gradual spill of trees speckling in a shadowed mass in the distance but standing back like wary observers to a gladiatorial match. There was no one about, no one that would brave the admittedly brightly brilliant morning to face the ruins that stood before him. The Orchard Ruins.

It was a castle of sorts. A castle that had fallen into disrepair, as though abandoned with little care for the continued existence of the monstrosity it had once been. It could have housed a small community, albeit one that would be forced to face the hardships of winter without a roof for the most part given that at least half of the cover had been rent to pieces. Crumbling walls of dark grey stone ringed the perimeter of the structure, roofless turreted towers, half of which appeared to have been bodily beheaded, peered just within sight, and scattering around those walls, clustered like children around their mother's skirts, were a sprinkling of trees. Apple trees, Nico knew, even if there was not a speck of the golden fruit to be seen. With the fall of the Golden Delicious pickings in late autumn and early winter, there was not a hint of colour to the skeletal trees bowed under snow, barely noticeable as an extension of the castle itself.

Nico and Hazel had briefly suspected years ago that if Ladon was going to take up residence anywhere in the US it would most likely be the Orchard Ruins. Not only was it a vast, cavernous ruin that, as far as Hazel was concerned, had a touch of unnecessary Mist that served to deter mortals for the most part, but the overgrown gardens that sprawled throughout were adorned with more apple trees that bore fruit so yellow they almost glowed than even the weeds that crawled through the cracks in the pavement.

Hazel had visited before. A year before, in the time when they had lacked the support and assistance – and the terrifying presence – of their friends. She had scouted and come up blank, declaring that there had been not a trace of monster activity for at least a couple of years within the ruins. Nico hadn't been all that surprised, really. While it was a likely site of habitation for the guard dog of the Garden of Hesperides, there was no guarantee that Ladon would be there.

Now it seemed that his absence was only due to the lateness of his arrival in the mortal world.

Nico didn't realise how long they'd all been standing, silent and waiting, until Thalia broke that silence. When she spoke, even though her voice wasn't overly loud, her words seemed to echo through the stillness. "Shall we, then?"

Eyes flickered between one another. Nico spared a moment to flash Will a glance, meeting his eyes and the determination within them. Yes, he was prepared. Will would always be prepared to fight, even if he had exhausted himself from a bout of healing just yesterday. Nico hadn't missed the brief surfacing of horror when Annabeth had suggested he remain at the cabin the previous afternoon. He'd looked as though he'd been told that Christmas would never come again, an apt analogy given how much he'd apparently enjoyed the day itself. Will had always been one to get excited over childish delights like that.

There was resolve in Will's gaze, however, absented entirely of even the slightest immaturity or childishness. Determined set his jaw and the firm grasp of the bow that was slung over his shoulder indicated him as ready as any of the rest of the demigods surrounding Nico. Every one of them seemed to draw a steadying breath before affixing their hardened gazes upon the ruins. The irrational arousal of excitement of the afternoon before at the prospect of actually _doing_ something had faded beneath the weight of what they were about to do.

Annabeth, as the one who usually acted as the spokesperson and general leader in such situations, nodded and turned towards Hazel. "You said Ladon was inside the ruins, didn't you? Not outside in the orchards?"

Nico caught sight of the brief flicker of uneasiness within Hazel's expression before she masked it with a nod. He knew where it came from, that like him Hazel was discomforted by the apparent deferral towards them both as the 'primary monster hunters' when actually on the scene. As if they truly knew what they were doing more than anyone else which, Nico would be more than happy to assure his friends, he did not.

"Yeah, he was inside," Hazel said quietly. "Pretty deep inside, too. I wasn't even keeping particular notice of our route when we were heading in but we got pretty far."

Annabeth nodded once more. "That's alright then. That's alright." She sounded almost as though she was coaching herself. "We'll just stick together and scour the entire ruins."

"That a hell of a job," Percy muttered from her side.

"Do you have a better idea?"

"No. I'm just pointing out the obvious."

With that, as though Percy's words had been a trigger, they all stepped forwards and began their climb up the slight inclination towards the ruins. They were eleven in number with Austin, Leo and Calypso left behind, but to Nico it seemed too few. Both too few and paradoxically too many – always too many. The snow was deep enough that they left deep rabbit-trails behind them, the crunch of ice beneath their collective boots the only sound besides the faint puffing of breath, the slight rattle of weapons in sheaths and the clatter of arrows in quivers.

They stepped through what must once have been a wooden door but now appeared as little more that a crumbling archway into the ruins itself. The sprawl of a snow-laden courtyard was surprisingly sparsely blanketed, as though it had been sheltered somehow from the worst of the winter weather. There was barely a hint of colour inside the walls either, the touch of green from sorry, drooping moss the only break in the consistent grey and white. Nico scanned the stretch of courtyard that he could see before it disappeared in either direction, following the curve of the ruin's walls. Not a hint of movement in sight, nor the scent of danger to interrupt the crisp sharpness of the clean air.

"No monsters," Will murmured from his side, speaking his thoughts. "I would have expected to have seen some by now."

"In a lot of ways, it's almost worse that there isn't anything," Kayla said from Will's other side, her tone similarly hushed. "It makes me expect an ambush or something."

"The offspring of the Children wouldn't be smart enough to organise and ambush, would they?" Reyna asked.

"Probably not, but then they do have a very smart hundred-headed dragon to organise it for them, don't they?"

"True that."

There was another moment of wait, the collective eyes of their entire party scanning the surrounds, before Hazel made a move. Hazel who, despite Nico knowing she held as much hesitancy to lead everyone into danger as he did, didn't pause in her step as she strode towards what must have been the front doors of the ruins. Doors that, remarkably, still stood tall, the wood slightly worn but otherwise persisting. Frank followed at her side, sword already drawn, and looking as though he'd leap into the attack should a shadow look at Hazel sideways. Nico was reassured by the fact. As one, the rest of them followed close behind.

The interior was as cavernous as the exterior suggested it was, made even more so by the squeaking click of the door closing behind them that appeared unable to prop open on its hinges. Only the high windows beamed a feeble light into the room to illuminate the scene.

Just the entrance hall was the size of a ballroom. High, arched ceilings and imposing stonewalls almost like those of a cathedral for their grandeur would have been impressive but for their stark blankness, devoid of anything but plain cornices, plain window fittings and plain, faintly slick grey stone. It was no warmer inside for the escape from the direct winter exposure, and Nico fathomed that he could scent a faint dampness, almost like mildew that should have long since abandoned the building in the stagnant air.

Across the room, embedded one in each opposing wall, were doorways. They almost looked like tunnels for the darkness they led into. Whoever had constructed the cathedral-like ruins evidently had a Halloween house of horrors in mind, for even stoically resolved as Nico was he felt a sense of foreboding settle itself upon his shoulders. Nico wasn't scared, hadn't been scared of monsters in a long time – at least not for himself – but the atmosphere was… haunting.

"Well, this is creepy," Jason whispered, though even his whisper echoed and hissed in a rebounding mimic from the distant walls. "Which direction do you think we should go in?"

Naturally, all eyes, even Nico's and Hazel's, turned towards Annabeth. She didn't seemed concerned at all to be left with the decision, hardly seemed to even notice the focus of those around her. Switching her gaze between the three tunnels, a hand raised to scratch at her chin and a contemplative frown upon her forehead, she paused only a moment before replying. "It doesn't really matter which one we go in. If it proves to be the wrong route, we'll reach a dead end eventually and just turn around and come back."

"I love that you sound so confident that we'll find a dead end," Percy said.

"It's impossible for it to go on forever," Piper reasoned, though she didn't sound particularly convinced by her speculation.

"Isn't it?" Percy replied. "Ever been in the Labyrinth before?"

"Oh yeah, there is that," Piper replied with a faint shudder. "No, I haven't. And I don't ever intend to either."

"Good idea."

"If I remember right, we went through the right tunnel first," Hazel spoke up, her expression solemn even for the casually didactic exchange between Percy and Piper. "Maybe if we just try…?"

Annabeth shrugged. "It's as good a suggestion as any, I guess," she said and hefting her bone sword she started across the entrance hall towards the right tunnel. Nico dutifully fell into step behind her alongside the rest of them, glancing around himself warily with a rising certainty that he was missing something. That _something_ was going to happen. Nothing did, however. No monsters spilled from the yawning tunnels, no whisper of sound disrupted the foreboding peace. Nothing at all.

Until the light disappeared.

Instantly, as though a switch had been flicked, the wan sunlight spilling through the windows evaporated. The entrance hall plunged into darkness, a thick, smothering blackness that felt so overwhelming that Nico felt himself almost struggle to breath. His eyes flared wide in response, peering around himself as a kick of adrenaline set his senses alight but… nothing. Just blackness. Not even he with his night vision could perceive anything. It was as though every whisper of light had truly been sucked from the air. For the first time in a monster battle, the first time truly in a long time, Nico felt himself slip out of his depth for his blindness.

He hated being blind. _Hated_ it.

Cries surrounded around him. Cries of surprise thankfully, not pain, exclamations of "What in Hades?" and "Where are you?" and "Hold my hand!" Nico wasn't sure who specifically demanded the latter – it sounded like Annabeth – but he sought to follow the order nonetheless. The hand that wasn't gripping his raised Stygian sword grasped and floundered uselessly around him. Nico felt like he was wading through dark, inky water.

Nothing. He couldn't feel anyone. He could hear them, which was reassuring, but reach as he did, he couldn't touch anyone. He couldn't find Will in the darkness, couldn't see or even hear him specifically. In a sudden seizing of panic, for the first time Nico actually felt sympathetic towards the rest of the world for their night blindness. Was this what it was like? It was horrible. He abruptly regretted Leo's absence; maybe he could have burned away the darkness that could only have been conjured by magic.

The thought was shaken loose from Nico's mind, however, thrust to the backburner when he heard the hissing. Faint at first, but then growing as though the sounds echoed off the walls like the call and cries of his friends. That sense of foreboding within him, elbowed aside by Nico's sudden surprise and the roiling fear induced by his blindness, swum to the fore once more.

"Everyone shut up!"

The order spilled from his lips before he could help himself, louder than he'd spoken in years. Maybe it was that which instantaneously silenced the sounds of his friends. That, or maybe they heard it too.

Silence fell upon the room. Silence that felt eerie alongside the pervasive darkness. Silence… except for the gradually rising hissing. The approaching. The sound of snakes, of monsters, for they could only be, escalated, filling the room with sound of their arrival.

"Oh shit," someone whispered into the darkness. It sounded as though they were a whole room away, audible only for their echo.

"Ladon's children," someone else said. It sounded like Thalia. "The serpents."

There was a brief pause, a static, silent rise of collective and repeated _oh shits,_ before Annabeth's cry burst through the darkness. "Everybody, run! Don't wait, just run!"

Nico didn't pause to consider the order. He knew exactly why Annabeth had given it. They were useless in their blindness. Helpless. Finding the light – that was what they had to do. And though Nico struggled to quell his rapidly rising fear for his friends, for Will – _of Gods, Will, where are you?_ – he didn't pause. He'd be no use to anyone anyway if he lingered, especially if the serpent offspring killed him.

Nico dropped himself into his shadows. Not to flee the cathedral ruins but to launch himself in the direction of the tunnel that they had been heading towards. He hoped, could only hope, that the rest of his friends would do similarly. That they would all think alike and be able to regroup in their intended location. Nico hoped. He desperately hoped.

Spinning himself from his shadows with a lurch, Nico's feet struck the stone floor and he instantly threw himself into a run. Sword in hand, ears straining for the sound of approaching monsters, he pelted through the darkness with only the vague consideration that, at such speed, he would likely plough into a wall. He wasn't sure if the sound of footsteps that followed him were the echo of his own or someone else's.

It didn't really matter. Not really. At least Nico told himself that.

* * *

He wasn't sure for how long he ran. Nico's difficulty gauging time in stressful situations only seemed to blossom the longer that stress continued. A stress driven by fear for his friends, for their survival, for their ability to escape the monsters. He felt like a coward running through the ensuing darkness, clawing blindly for even the faintest trace of light, but he couldn't do anything else. He couldn't _see_ anything to _do_ anything.

Nico ran into exactly three walls before he considered slowing his pace. Three collisions and multiple corridors that resulted in a bruised knee, scraped hands and the sudden, smacking loss of breath not exactly in that order were what it took to finally slow him down. Breath huffing, Nico fell to a stop, ears straining for the slightest hint of sound.

Alone. He was definitely alone. Those footsteps must have just been his own.

It was probably a good thing that Nico slowed when he had. Not minutes after he'd fallen back into a wary step, sword raised and eyes peeled uselessly, he heard the sound. It was barely more than the slick graze of scales sliding over stone, but it was enough. Ears straining, eyes narrowed pointlessly and even his nose inhaling sharply for the slightest assist, Nico lunged forwards and swung at the source of the noise.

His sword contacted flesh, slicing through with relative ease. When Nico heard another sound, a hiss this time just behind the first, and he swung at that one too. And then another, and another.

Serpents. Serpents that, like the heads of Ladon, bundled together for strength in numbers. Nico sliced and swung, sweeping towards what little he could make out of his attackers for their barest sounds. The darkness was debilitating, dangerous for the smothering blindness it induced. Nico's sword rebounded jarringly off a wall, he nearly tripped into the wall on the other side of the corridor to avoid the first, and the monsters… the monsters used it.

Nico felt a bite to his calf that blessedly unlatched when he swung his sword at his attacker. He felt another glancing attack at his midsection strike the leather vest he wore beneath his jacket. He felt the wrap of muscular, clenching body loop itself around his knees so suddenly it must have leapt bodily at him, and only just managed to dance out of the bindings before a hiss so close to his face that the serpent _must_ have leapt soared past. Nico spun and ducked when he heard another flying serpent, parried where it felt necessary even if it wasn't, batted away the jaws of the serpents with single-minded determination. The monsters fell around him, the sounds of their bodies falling limply and heavily onto the ground and the popping burst of their disintegration the only evidence of his success.

He would take it, if nothing else.

Finally, panting slightly, Nico found himself alone once more. At least he thought he was alone; he couldn't be sure, and that thought was almost as concerning as the one nagging endlessly for the welfare of his friends. He didn't know, had no idea what lay around him. Nico didn't know where anyone else was, if they were endangered or perhaps even – even _dead_ , if they were lost somewhere alone in the depths of the ruins.

 _Just like me_ , a thought pointed out in the back of his head. Nico forcibly thrust the reminder away. He didn't mind being alone. Not really. It was the fact that he didn't know where everyone else was that bothered him. No, it more than bothered him. It very nearly scared him.

With slow steps, edging through the dust of dead monsters he could feel coating the stone floors like salt on ice, Nico made his way down the corridor. He barely had the presence of mind to regret the permanent destruction of the monsters. In battles that he fought against the Children, Nico did so entirely. He left his Imperial gold sword, the sword given him by Prosperina, at the flat and outfitted himself only with his Stygian sword and the matching obsidian knifes strapped to his forearm and inner calf. He couldn't afford to accidentally vanquish one of the Children back to Tartarus rather then dissolve them completely, not when Hazel's life, when the lives of his friends, of Will, were on the line.

Nico could hardly even bring himself to feel guilty in that moment. Not right now. Later, perhaps, but not now. He continued down that dark hallway, free hand trailing upon the nearest wall and ears straining as much as his useless eyes. He didn't know what kind of magic could possibly have robbed the air of every ounce of light, blinding him so utterly and he wasn't sure he even wanted to find out.

Three turns. Three turns was all it took for Nico to hear the sound of another approacher. His sword immediately rose, but even as he did so Nico had the suspicion that it wasn't a monster that he happened across. Or at least that it wasn't a serpent. He drew a breath to speak, feet slowing to a stop, and –

A missile, hard and cold, slightly damp and smelling of citrus, smacked him at his collarbone. At such proximity as it must have been, it struck Nico like a lobbed shot put, immediately winding him and rocking him back into the nearest wall. Fear was absent, however, for his nose told him exactly what it was that had hit him. "Piper!"

A slipping of feet on the floor and an indrawn breath reassured Nico that Piper had stopped in her attack. "Who – Nico?"

"Did you just shoot me with an orange?"

"Wha -? I – yeah, I just – from the Cornucopia I just –"

"You did. You actually shot me with an orange."

"I'm sorry!" Piper exclaimed, though if anything she sounded more relieved than apologetic. "I thought you might have been a monster."

Regaining his breath with a groan for his bruised stomach – the force of the projectile from Piper's Cornucopia must be incredible for him to have felt it so powerfully – Nico straightened himself from the wall. "I'm not a monster, just in case you were wondering."

"Well, that's a relief."

"Please don't shoot me with anymore fruit."

Piper gave a slight laugh that sounded more than a little forced. "I won't. Promise. If I do shoot anything at you, I promise it will be something softer. Maybe a baguette or something."

"Wonderful."

"Have you found anyone else?"

Nico's brief relief at finding Piper, arising after he'd recovered from his initial indignation at being struck by an orange, faded at her question. He shook his head before remembering that she wouldn't be able to see him any more than he could see her. "No. You?"

There was a pause in which Nico suspected Piper too shook her head in silent reply. "No. I did come across some monsters, though."

"Serpents?"

"Yeah. They hunt in packs, I think."

"Knots."

"Pardon?"

"It's called a knot of snakes. Or a pit, or a nest, or a den. A brood if they're a family group or a rhumba if they're rattlesnakes."

Piper was silent for a moment before speaking with faint bemusement and actual sincerity. "Aren't you just a fountain of knowledge, then? Where's this snake lore arise from?"

Nico should his head. "Not quite lore, I don't think. And it's just one of those things you pick up, you know? Like the names of capital cities, or dog breeds or whatever." He felt it unnecessary to mention that the real reason lay in that, given Echidna and a significant proportion of her children were at least part snake, he had felt obliged to become affiliated with basic knowledge on the subject.

"Huh," Piper said. "I guess."

Brushing aside the conversation, Nico took a step forwards. He reached his arm towards when he thought Piper's voice had come from. When his fingers brushed against her arm he felt her start.

"Sorry," he said. "Just thought it was probably better that we keep in contact somehow."

Piper didn't reply, or at least not in any verbal sense. An instant later, however, Nico found himself with his wrist firmly locked in her death grip, as though she sought to never release him from her grasp.

Nico tried not to be unnecessarily and ridiculously awkward for the situation; honestly, it was a necessity, and he wasn't _that_ averse to touching other people, even if they weren't Will. He shrugged off the discomfort as, after a brief pause, Piper spoke. "Should we keep looking, then?"

"For Ladon or for everyone else?"

Piper gave a slight shudder that Nico felt through their fingers. "Preferably everyone else before we go monster hunting."

Nico nodded redundantly. "At least we're on the same page in that regard."

Without another word they set off once more in the direction Nico had been heading. Though the darkness didn't lift, he felt almost as though the empty halls were lightened by Piper's presence at his side. He'd never been especially close to Piper in particular, but in this instance it was just slightly reassuring.

They didn't come across any more serpents. Not even after long minutes of walking down corridor after dark corridor. Nico was only just considering once more how vastly huge the ruins were when he heard a noise. A noise that, blessedly, wasn't hissing or the heavy crashing of an oversized, multi-headed python.

"Is that voices?" Piper asked with tentative hope at his side.

Nico didn't reply. Instead, he set off at a brisker walk, tugging Piper towards the source of the sound only briefly before she picked up her pace, overtook him, and was nearly dragging him in turn. Another corridor, another corner, and slowly, just faintly, Nico perceived light. He'd never been happier to have darkness lifted. Piper's sudden break into a run held no objection on Nico's part in the slightest.

Another three short corridors, three turns in which the plain stone of the walls gradually grew into visibility to the rising murmur of voices, and Nico and Piper finally burst into a room about half the size of the entrance hall. It wasn't brightly lit, still wreathed in shadows, but there was enough light to see by. In the very centre of that room stood Annabeth and Percy.

"Oh, thank the Gods!" Piper exclaimed, starting towards them and continuing to Nico behind her for her fierce grip. "We heard your voices. Have you found anyone else?"

It was a pointless question, Nico considered, given that Annabeth and Percy were alone, but he couldn't blame Piper. Her words were driven by concern, by desperation. Nico thought he might have even asked if she hadn't beaten him to it.

Annabeth and Percy spun towards them at their entrance, the wary readiness of their stances easing into relief almost instantly. They crossed the remaining distance between them as Percy shook his head. "No. Sorry, we haven't seen anyone."

"It was only chance that we managed to stick together in the first place," Annabeth added.

Piper adopted a faintly longing and recurringly desperate expression. "You've been together the whole time?"

Percy nodded again. "Annabeth was smart enough to grab my hand before we got separated in the dark."

Nico felt a flash of self-reprimand, kicking himself for his stupidity in not doing the same. Why hadn't he grasped a hold of Will? Or of anyone, really, but mostly Will. From the glance he gave Piper he suspected she was of a like mind. "Good thinking," she said with a tight swallow.

"Just lucky, more than anything," Annabeth said. "I take it you haven't happened across anyone else either?"

Piper shook her head, glancing towards Nico. "No. It was just luck for us too that we stumbled into each other at all."

"She shot we with an orange," Nico supplied, the blossoming bruise on his collarbone demanding recognition.

Percy snorted. "Classic. You've got a good eye for fruit-missiles, Piper."

"I don't know if that's a compliment or not, but I'll take it."

"It is. I think it definitely contributes to your cooking skills."

"Aren't you sweet."

Nico ignored their sarcastic exchange, turning his gaze around the room. The shadows in the corners of the room weren't chased away by what appeared to be an ambient light, sourced not even from a secreted window or a couple of candles. It was eerie in its sourceless-ness, and Nico wasn't sure how much he preferred it to the darkness of the corridor. It was largely empty but for what looked like an inside veranda elevated at the height of a second storey. Nico was reminded of the old-fashioned, double-storey libraries with a second floor of books accessed by stairs and ladders that slid on rungs. Except that this veranda didn't appear to have any stairs of ladders, no access but for a single dark door at one corner leading into who knew where. That, and there weren't any books apparent. Not even any shelving.

"Why is it light in here?" He asked, his question more rhetorical than anything.

Annabeth stepped up to his side, arms folding while still managing to keep her grasp on her sword, and frowned around herself. "That's what I was wondering. It seems almost too good to be true. Unnecessary."

"As though this room was being specifically illuminated for some reason," Nico nodded.

Annabeth sent Nico a glance of concern. "You don't know any monsters that can manipulate darkness, do you?"

Nico shook his head. "I thought it might have been the Mist."

"I thought that too, but…"

"But Hazel would have probably managed to do something about that if it was."

"Yeah, that's what I thought."

Nico didn't even have a moment to feel satisfied that he and Annabeth, the resident brains trust of their party, were thinking along the same lines. She'd barely stopped speaking when an entirely new voice interrupted their conversation. "It's not Mist. You're right about that, at least."

Nico's attention whipped towards the source of the voice, snapping his gaze across the room. He could feel the attention of Annabeth, Percy and Piper beside him similarly trained but he didn't spare them a moment to exchange a concerned glance. Instead, Nico fastened his stare upon the young woman that stepped into the room from a tunnel-like doorway he had barely even noticed across from that he and Piper had entered from. Woman, or women, more correctly, for there were four. Little more than girls, they looked younger than Nico.

They were identical, the four of them, but for slight variation in cut of their white chitons, in the styling of their pooling black hair that tumbled at varying lengths over their shoulders. Identical and beautiful, Nico recognised, but for the complete blackness of their eyes apparent even across the distance of the hall. Skin the colour of burnt sugar appeared paler in the poor lighting, though that could have been simply in contrast to the shadows that masked half of each of their faces, cutting their features into sharp planes.

They seeped into the room on bare feet, pausing just inside the doorway and spreading out in a line. Their slouching poses were anything but casual, to Nico resembling nothing if not warriors waiting with deceptively calm readiness. Their slight smiles that looked more cruel and taunting than welcoming only emphasised the fact. Nico recognised them instantly, painfully, knew who they were for their resemblance to Zoe Nightshade if nothing else. It settled a sick feeling in his gut.

"The Hesperides," Annabeth whispered. Her words were hardly hushed, however, echoing in a hiss through the room like the threats of the serpents Nico had encountered in the corridors. Comprehension was rich in her words, just as it struck Nico. The Hesperides, the smothering blackness, the Mist that apparently wasn't Mist… he didn't think it a stretch to deduce where the tampering came from. Not if it was _them._

As one, the four young women slid their black-eyed attention towards her. It was eerie, as though they were looking without really seeing, and Nico couldn't shake the feeling that, though they were looking at Annabeth, he, Percy and Piper were hardly neglected from their sights.

One of the central ones, her smile widening just slightly in what could only be considered malicious glee, cocked her head slightly. "Ah, so you do remember us."

"You're a little hard to forget," Annabeth replied. Nico could feel the tension thrumming through her frame without glancing towards her, peripherally noticing her hand tightening on the hilt of her sword.

One of the other girls laughed. Nico didn't like the sound anymore than he did their smiles. "Yes, we do leave something of an impression, don't we?"

"Who... who are you?" Piper asked lowly. She shifted in her stance, dagger and sword rising just slightly from where she'd abruptly drawn them both.

The Hesperides drew their communal attention towards her instead, the synchrony of their turning heads unnerving. Their collective smiles faded slightly, as though they were offended by her ignorance. One clicked her tongue in indignation while another narrowed her eyes until they were barely wider than slits. The first speaker, the one that Nico fathomed was perhaps the spokesperson of their party, lifted her chin slightly. "We have not met you before, daughter of Aphrodite."

Piper, her wariness apparently suppressed by affront for their response, similarly lifted her chin. "No, you haven't. Who are you?"

"We are the nymphs of Hesperides," the speaker said. "Guardians of Hera's Garden. I am Aegle."

"And I am Erytheia," said the one to her left.

"And I Hesperia," another added.

"And I Arethusa," said the final girl. "We are the protectors of her golden apples. To protect from thieves." Her voice was biting and Nico detected a note of accusation in her tone as though she were accusing them of some misconceived thievery.

Piper frowned in evident confusion but her wariness remained. "I thought Ladon guarded the golden apples."

"He does," Annabeth said, murmuring from the corner of her mouth. "Or at least he did. The Hesperides, though, they were the original guardians. Until it was discovered that they kept stealing Hera's apples."

Nico was faintly in awe of Piper's ability to assume an expression of absolute condescension in the face of the girls' subsequent frowns. "Really? So in your duty of guarding Hera's garden from thieves, it was really you who were the ultimate thieves?"

The Hesperides uttered a communal growl, frowns deepening as each of their eyes narrowed dangerously. "Hold your tongue, Aphrodite spawn," Hesperia said lowly. "You know nothing."

"What are you even doing here?" Percy hastened to ask, as though attempting to divert the angry focus of the girls' attention.

It worked. Or at least Nico perceived that it worked. Those four sets of black eyes swung towards Percy and Nico saw him shift and lift Riptide just a little higher. But the glares had already begun to fade and a faintly amused, almost fixated attentiveness settled upon their faces. Nico didn't like that anymore than the scowls, and even less than their smiles. Aegle was the one who spoke in reply. "Why, because Ladon is here, of course."

 _Of course_ , Nico mimicked silently, sarcastically, giving an internal roll of his eyes. Aloud, he couldn't help but ask, "That's a little redundant, isn't it? When the primary guardian of the garden leaves, you follow him? Who's left to stand guard, then?"

As the dark gazes turned towards him, Nico understood the reason why his friends had shifted beneath their silent weight. Just the focus of such darkness was discomforting, and Nico knew darkness. He liked the dark, even if that which he'd most recently experienced was disconcerting in the blindness it induced. But those eyes... he didn't like them in the slightest.

Aegle was the one who replied once more, with that faint smile that Nico sorely wished she would drop. "Of course, our primary duty is to protect the garden. But this is our Ladon who has fled for a mission of his own."

" _Your_ Ladon?" Piper asked.

"Yes, ours." Aegle nodded. "It is our duty to protect him as much as we protect the apples."

"Protect him?" Percy asked incredulously. He looked faintly sickened by the thought; Nico knew he'd never been particularly comfortable with the monster. About as uncomfortable as Percy ever felt for monsters. "You needed to protect a hundred-headed drakon?"

Surprisingly, the Hesperides' gaze didn't shake from Nico. He felt pinned, like a moth to a board by their unwavering focus. "Yes," Aegle murmured, almost contemplatively. "Because there are some who seek to destroy him. Utterly."

Nico felt his anger rise, his affront and fury at the situation at large abruptly swelling. Destroy him? As if it wasn't in self-defence in the first place? In spite of his wariness, his unease that had only been mounting since he'd stepped inside the castle, Nico felt his lip curl and a glare settle upon his face. "You're protecting him from me? From Hazel?" He gave a bark of laughter that held not the slightest hint of amusement. "Do you actually know what Ladon's 'mission' is?"

"Of course we do," one of the other Hesperides spat. Nico thought it was Erytheia. "To eradicate those who can so hurt him."

"Why do you think I would hurt him in the first place?" Nico asked, straightening in his affront. "You think I'd chase down one of the most dangerous monsters in existence just for kicks?"

"It is what you demigods do," Aegle said, her voice low and slightly harsh. The thoughtfulness of her expression had faded, leaving only growing anger and swirling hate in its wake. "Demigods have always destroyed monsters. Always."

"Because monsters attack us," Percy pointed out, gesturing towards them each with a point of his sword.

The Hesperides growled once more, the sound strangely deep and guttural for their dainty, delicate impressions. Gazes shifted towards him. "You always start it."

"No we don't," Piper said. "It's not like we want to hunt monsters. They chase us first."

"Lies," Arethusa growled. "Monsters attack you because you seek to destroy them."

"You're definitely getting your facts mixed up," Percy said.

"Not! We are not!" That from Erytheia. "Demigods have quested with the sole desire to hunt monsters for centuries. That is what you do!"

"In retaliation," Percy persisted. "They started -"

"Silence!" Aegle demanded, her voice rising. Nico switched his gaze between the four, to the faces that were so beautiful but so twisted with anger and aggression. Perhaps it was simply because he wasn't used to nymphs appearing so close to violence but there seemed something very wrong at the sight of it. "You will be silent! We have no need to listen to your lies."

"It's not lies -" Piper attempted, but for once the persuasiveness of her tongue seemed to fail her entirely.

"Silence," Aegle growled, her lip curling in a snarl. "You demigods, we know what it is you seek to do. You wish to destroy our Ladon. She has told us as such."

"She?" Annabeth asked, taking a slight step forwards. "You mean Echidna?"

The question seemed to baffle the Hesperides momentarily for they swung their attention towards Annabeth to stare silently for a long pause. Then Aegle shook her head. "Echidna? Why would we listen to her?"

"Well, if it isn't Echidna then who -?"

"The mother of monsters does not speak to us," Aegle continued, as if she hadn't even heard Annabeth speak. Nico thought he could detect a slight note of longing, almost sadness in her tone, as though she regretted the fact. "She speaks to none of us. How could she from Tartarus?"

In spite of himself, Nico let out a slight gasp of relief. Echidna was still in Tartarus, at least as far as the Hesperides knew. That was indeed good news. She'd managed to claw her way to the surface briefly to give her initial command to her offspring, but the draw of the pit was too great for her mammoth presence and Nico knew she hadn't been able to linger long. He had feared she may have made another appearance, perhaps even hauled herself to the mortal world with a visage of permanency, but apparently...

Aegle was still speaking, shaking Nico from his momentary distraction. "The mother of Ladon was not who has enlightened us. It was not she who warned us of your threat to our precious drakon."

"Enlightened?" Piper asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Of your threat, of course," Hesperia growled. She seemed like the angriest one. "You mean to destroy him. He had learned of it and he must defeat you first. It is the reason he left his post in the first place."

"He left because of his mother's compulsion," Nico began, and even as he said it a sudden realisation occurred to him. "A compulsion that it seems might be affecting the four of you too somehow -"

"We are under no such obligation," Aegle hissed, and in a fluid motion she and her three sisters flowed forwards. Nico immediately found himself withdrawing, sword rising alongside his friends as they retreated in step.

"That would make sense," Annabeth murmured. "They seem different somehow. Maybe they are compelled?"

"Oh good, it wasn't just me thinking that, then," Percy whispered back. "I swear they weren't quite as aggressive last time."

"Do you even remember last time? They were aggressive alright."

"Yeah, but not this bad. This time they seem really, really angry."

"They do at that..." Annabeth trailed off as she paused in her retreat. Hefting her bone sword, she set her shoulders and faced the four girls slinking forwards in fluid strides. "You say she has enlightened you. Who is 'she'? If not Echidna, then who?"

Annabeth's question didn't stop the girls in their approach but it did seem to soothe the narrow-minded focus of their anger somewhat. Aegle's smile resurfaced, a cruel smile that spoke of anger and sadistic aggression. "Her, of course."

"'Her'?" Annabeth repeated with a frown. "Who is 'her'?"

"Why, daughter of Athena, me. Who else?"

Nico spun so fast he nearly fell over. His gaze snapped upwards in search of the source of the rumbling reply that seemed to lather the air like viscous honey. Upwards towards the veranda, narrowing upon the figure sprawled with disconcerting balance upon the thin stone railing. His breath caught.

The sphinx was bigger than he had thought her. Bigger than Percy and Annabeth's tales of their past confrontation had depicted her. She was easily the size of small car, the wings sprouting from her back larger than that of any pegasus Nico had seen except for perhaps Reyna's Sergeant and tucked loosely to her back. Her tail swung like a cats, flicking and twitching over the edge of the railing and dangling like a curtain's tasselled cord. Her huge front paws, larger than any lioness' should be, crossed placidly, claws flexing slightly as though stretching. But more disconcerting than that, than her size or the features of the deadly monster she was, was her face. Her thick neck, adorned with a heavily chained necklace of some kind with a large lapis-lazuli stone at its centre, and the head of a woman, tawny skin and long mane slightly darker and blanketing her shoulders. Her face and her eyes, flashing golden and glowing like the headlights of a truck at night. They were even brighter for the darkness of the room.

Nico immediately felt his chest seize, dread mounting even greater than it had been since he'd first been separated from Will, from his friends in the entrance hall. This was the sphinx. The sphinx, one of the most intelligent monsters in existence, past and present, a creature that revelled in taunting and playing with her victims like a cat with a struggling mouse. Annabeth and Percy had said that she had been out of sorts when they had seen them, indignant as some monsters appeared to be in the modern world over the alteration of the ancient times they were first birthed into.

There was none of that indignation now, none of the frustrated distraction in the sphinx's manner. She gazed upon them, an eagle sighting oblivious rabbits as though choosing her target, tail swishing and twitching in eagerness. A cheshire cat smile stretched across her face, broad and toothy, revealing overlong, pointed teeth in place of stunted canines. And her gaze was trained, not upon Annabeth to whom she had spoken, but to Nico. There was keenness in her stare that made him feel sick to his stomach.

"Oh Gods," Annabeth murmured. "The sphinx. The sphinx as well as Ladon."

"What fucking luck," Percy growled at her side.

The sphinx rumbled a deep laugh, eyes scrunching shut momentarily in amusement. "Luck, son of Poseidon?" She shook her head. "No, it is not luck."

"You planned this," Annabeth said, and there was no question in her words.

"Indeed," the sphinx confirmed. "Have I not orchestrated the situation perfectly?"

"You were the one that set Ladon up here?"

The sphinx turned her gaze briefly towards Piper? "I? Install him here?" She gave another rumbling laugh. "It was hardly an installation. My brother did not need encouragement. He was drawn to this region on his hunt himself." Her gaze drew back towards Nico, eyes seeming to gleam brighter still. "You do smell so tantalising."

Nico immediately felt dirty. Dirty, and utterly stupid. A trap. They'd walked straight into a trap like a mouse chasing cheese. _Stupid, so stupid_ , he scolded himself. Why hadn't any of them considered that it would be a trap?

 _Because none of the other monsters had the forethought to do such a thing_ , he answered himself. _Nor the intelligence to manipulate the situation and us with it._ _The sphinx drew us in and when she had us..._ "You were the one who stole the light?" He asked, even as he was sure it wasn't her specifically.

The sphinx cocked her head slightly. "I? Indeed it was not. I have no such power over darkness."

"That was us."

Nico glanced over his shoulder at Aegle's words and flinched. The Hesperides were no longer approaching but they were closer than that had been. More than that, then have circled in a half ring around Nico and his friends, as though to trap them against the wall beneath the sphinx's perch. Nico was under no illusions for their capacity to stop him should he make an attempt to break through their ranks. He couldn't see any weapons, but the nymphs of Hesperides were reputedly deadly, and not only for their siren-like luring of trespassers to their deaths with music and dance. Zoe Nightshade had been more than exemplifying of their ferocity; she may have been a disowned sister, but even disowned she maintained the fighting skills of her siblings.

"You leeched the light?" Nico asked warily, raising his sword unconsciously in an attempt to put some sort of defence between himself and the nymphs. He'd suspected as much since he'd first seen them but couldn't help but ask for confirmation anyway. Ask anything as some sort of distraction; he didn't want to risk a silence for potential attack.

Aegle eyed his sword with satisfying wariness for a moment before drawing her attention back towards Nico. Her smile looked only slightly forced. "Of course we did."

"How is that possible?" Piper demanded. "It can't be with the Mist, surely. How did you -?"

"Foolish girl, we are the daughters of Nyx herself, the goddess of the night," Hesperia said sharply.

Nico nodded slightly in acknowledgement as Annabeth hummed in understanding. "Of course. That would make sense. They have command over the light because of..."

"Why would you even do that?" Percy asked, glancing over his shoulder at each of the nymphs in turn. "Because the sphinx told you to? I thought you were loyal to your garden and Ladon?"

"Of course they are," the sphinx said in her deep, honey-drenched voice. "That is something we have in common."

"You don't have any loyalty to your brother." Nico turned a glare up towards the giant of a monster perched above them. "You're just using him."

"Yes," the sphinx agreed. "Just as he is using me. We are working together to achieve a common goal."

"By using him as bait?"

The sphinx chuckled. "Bait? Ah, my brother is far too intimidating to be deemed so diminutively. We work together. And his lovely co-guardians," the sphinx raised a paw the size of a dustbin lid in an unnervingly human-like gesture, waving it towards the nymphs. They seemed to preen under her praise. "They have agreed to assist my endeavour."

"To kill me," Nico said shortly.

"Of course. Before you kill us."

"I wouldn't be fighting you if you weren't hunting me first."

"Is that how you see it?" The sphinx cocked her head once more. "You do not believe that you would have sought out our destruction eventually when you discovered the true powers of the weapon only you and your sister can wield?"

"I wouldn't."

"Lies," Aegle growled from behind Nico. "Your tongue spews lies."

"Indeed it does." The sphinx nodded her head sagely, though even from a distance Nico could make out the hint of a smile upon her lips. "Very apt discernment, my dear."

"Can we kill them?"

"Hm..." The sphinx tilted her head slightly. "I believe that we could."

"Wonderful." With a glance, Nico saw Aegle's deadly smile spread once more as, seemingly from thin air she drew a dagger as long as Piper's Katopris. Her stance, her expression, the gleam in her black eyes, was deadly and flooded with an almost manic gleam, reflected in that of her similarly abruptly armed sisters. It was a familiar gleam, one that Nico recognised from the eyes of each of the monsters he'd fought so far. There was hatred welling within their dark depths, a hatred that was more powerful than it should have been, even with the rage of murdered siblings that, realistically, the monsters cared little enough about. Nico's suspicions as to their compulsion, a compulsion that appeared to have been somehow acquired from Ladon like a residual command, was only reaffirmed. He raised his sword.

Only to pause in lowering his stance at Annabeth's cry. "Wait! Wait a second!"

Nico glanced towards her, towards where she was turned with wide-eyed attention towards the sphinx. She appeared to be struggling to ignore the Hesperides completely. "This isn't how this should work," she said. Or demanded, from her tone.

The sphinx's head cocked slightly once more. "How what should work, daughter of Athena?"

"A fight. Against you. This isn't how it's supposed to work. You're supposed to ask us questions before you kill us."

"Questions?' Erytheia spat, momentarily snapping Nico's attention towards her once more. "What sort of drivel is this that you speak?"

To Nico's surprise, the sphinx's vengeful delight had eased some. Curiosity welled in her eyes, flashing them more yellow than golden. "You call upon the ancient enactment of a confrontation with the sphinx herself?" She asked, her voice formal as she referred to herself in third person.

Annabeth nodded. "I do. And as such, I call upon the right to leave this place unharmed should your questions be answered correctly. For myself and my friends."

Nico immediately saw what she was doing. He had to applaud both Annabeth's quick thinking and her courage. She was tempting the sphinx's natural curiosity, her innate love of games and intelligent play, in an attempt to avoid a fight against the Hesperides. Nico wasn't sure how well they would fare in a fight against the nymphs, even being strong and capable in fighting most monsters, but he didn't particularly want to find out. They were each smaller than Nico, shorter and appeared even fragile when compared to most of those he'd fought but... there was a power that radiated from each, an almost visible force that intimidated as much as any creature ten times their size. Besides that, they could control the light; Nico and his friends could likely be effectively blinded in an instant.

Not to mention that they appeared human. They weren't, but they appeared to be, more so than most monsters. And Nico... Nico didn't want to kill them. He didn't want to tear their souls to shreds, into irreparable pieces as he would if he struck them with his sword. He hadn't even brought an alternative along with him, and it wasn't like he could simply step out of the fight and leave it to his friends to defend themselves. Not when it was uncertain if they could even defeat them.

Even so, Annabeth's suggestion was almost as dangerous. Nico wasn't certain, but he suspected the sphinx likely would have remained nothing but an observer to the fight had Annabeth not drawn upon the ancient battle of wits, at least until it looked as though they would overthrow the nymphs. Now, however, the sphinx was directly involved. She would have to let them leave if they answered her questions correctly, but if they didn't... the sphinx was a creature of intelligence, grounded in wordplay and cunning, but it didn't mean she couldn't strike them down by force. She had done just as much to many a warrior and demigod for millennia, smiting those who incorrectly answered her riddles.

The sphinx hummed for a moment, amusement drawing the cheshire cat smile across her face once more. Nico knew before she spoke that she had been tempted. "Alright then, daughter of Athena. You shall have your questions, and your freedom should you answer them correctly."

"For myself and my friends," Annabeth clarified.

The sphinx's tail twitched but her smile didn't waver. "For you and your friends, yes."

"No!" Aegle objected, her voice a snapping bark that seemed far too deep and harsh to have come from her lips. "No, that is not fair! We want to -"

"You will be silent, child of Nyx," the sphinx said quietly. Quietly, but with such force that the room seemed to thrum with her command. "Do not tempt me to turn my anger upon you."

Aegle subsided, her sisters falling into a similarly disgruntled hush. Their daggers never lowered, however.

With a fluid slide, the sphinx rose to her feet. Balancing upon the stone railing of the veranda like a tightrope walker, she peered down upon them. "Alright. So the battle of wits goes, so shall it begin. I shall ask of you five questions -"

"Five?" Annabeth interrupted sharply.

"- and you shall answer them if you can." The sphinx tilted her smiling face, ignoring Annabeth's question entirely. "Do you still agree to the challenge?"

Annabeth opened her mouth to reply, and Nico thought she would object for a moment. Then she clamped her lips shut and shook her head. "No. I don't object."

The sphinx hummed in something of a purr of satisfaction. "Good. Then we shall begin." With prowling steps, she began to pace along the railing, skirting the veranda around them. Nico had to turn in place to keep her in his sights. Disconcertingly, the nymphs took up pacing around them in identical steps, as though attempting to keep them cornered between themselves and the wall closed to the sphinx. "Tell me this: who was the first to open that which should never be opened?"

Silence met her words. With a start, Piper glanced towards Annabeth. "What is this? A riddle? I thought the sphinx gave riddles."

"Not anymore," Annabeth replied in a murmur. "Apparently she tends towards trivia nowadays, although... to me, this sounds almost like a riddle itself." She paused, frowning for a moment before speaking up. "If I were to hazard a guess, that which should never be opened would be Pandora's box. In which case, the answer would be Pandora?"

Nico stared at Annabeth for a moment, caught up in the speed of her reply. She hadn't even asked the rest of them for their support or input, but only because Nico fathomed that she didn't need it. At least not in this case.

His suspicions were confirmed as the sphinx bowed her head in a nod. Still pacing slowly along the balcony railing, she hummed a small purr. "Indeed. You are correct."

At his side, Nico heard Annabeth release a nearly inaudible sigh of breath. He glanced towards her once more to notice a momentary pause in her confidence as though she was unnerved. Because she is, he realised. She was terrified of answering incorrectly, especially when the weight lay mostly upon her shoulders in being their designated 'smart' person. In an instant, Nico's own fears, his own wariness, was shunted slightly to the side. This wasn't Annabeth's battle, or at least not entirely. And he would help her where he could.

The sphinx had moved on, still pacing and speaking with her mellow, almost soothing tone. "Tell me: when is the gift of light bestowed?"

Annabeth opened her mouth to reply, then paused. "The gift of light? Bestowed, as in...? In what situation? Ever, or...?" The sphinx only watched them with a slight smile.

"When does someone first see?" Percy suggested after a pause. "Is that what she means? What does that even..."

"A baby, then," Nico spoke up, drawing the attention of his friends. He didn't know if his suggestion was correct, and in his own wariness, his own rapidly tensing thoughts, he wasn't sure how accurate his contribution would be. He didn't have any other suspicions, however, so it was better than nothing. "When does a baby get their vision?" He glanced towards Annabeth. "Do you know?"

At Nico's and Percy's suggestions, Annabeth seemed to push through her uncertainty and visibly growing fear. She frowned, but it was with determination once more. She nodded, as though in agreement to the answer that Nico hadn't even given. "If we are speaking of 'ever', then that would be within the womb." She glanced up at the sphinx. "A baby can perceive light and darkness even in its mother's womb."

There was a pause in which Annabeth seemed to wait for a reply from the sphinx that was not offered. Her mouth opened and closed once more, seeming to grasp for something. Then she continued with resolute determination. "But for actual vision - which isn't even what you asked," her tone was faintly accusing, "a child's eyes gain the clarity of an adult within six to eight months of its birth."

The sphinx's silence stretched for a moment longer before she hummed once more. Her smile remained affixed and she even seemed happy, as though Annabeth's answer filled her with delight. Nico didn't know how Annabeth knew that, didn't know how she knew most of what she did, and it only caused him to tense further. He felt a moment of redoubled apprehension, a temporary breathlessness – had they misinterpreted the question? – before the sphinx bowed her head and set about lengthening her stride on the railing. "It does indeed."

Each of them released a relieved sigh. Piper was shaking her head, a little shakily. Nico couldn't blame her; the adrenaline pumping through his own veins was making him twitchy. "How do you even know stuff like that, Annabeth?" She asked, admiration rich in her tone.

Annabeth afforded her a faintly sickly smile, made even feebler by the paleness the darkened room afforded her. "I read, I guess."

"Never stop," Percy said fervently.

The sphinx suddenly spoke over their exchange, her addictive inclination to pursue her game thick in her rumbling voice. "Tell me: where is that which is most coveted by darkness?"

"I'm sensing a common theme here," Nico muttered. He scowled up at the sphinx accusingly, then at the nymphs. "Are the questions of light and darkness in deference to your allies? Are you trying to butter them up or something?" He received no answer for his question but for a slight broadening of the nymph's smiles as though the thought delighted them. The sphinx kept on prowling, urging Nico and his friends to turn with her motions as she skirted the room.

Annabeth turned towards Nico. "The place most coveted by darkness. Would that be the Underworld?" She asked.

Nico was unnerved for a moment that she would ask him. He didn't think himself smart, certainly not when it came to academic knowledge or that of... well, just about anything considered 'smart'. That was Will's area of expertise. The passing thought, the sickening reminder of Will tightened Nico's gut briefly. _Please be okay._

Suddenly faintly nauseous, he shook his head. It was a struggle to get the thought of Will out of his head, even with the severity of their situation. What if he'd stumbled upon Ladon? Or if he didn't hear the serpent offspring creeping up on him before it was too late? Nico managed to answer eventually, though to his ears his voice was strained. "The Underworld isn't really all that dark. Not really."

"Then Tartarus, maybe?" Annabeth suggested. She seemed to flinch at her own words, as both Nico and Percy did unconsciously alongside her. None of them had ever been quite the same after their respective experiences. It was something they shared in common.

Nico struggled to thrust that thought aside too. He shook his head once more. "Unless we're speaking of where Nyx resides," he shook his head again. "But she moves all over the place, doesn't she? Or at least she did. What one place would be 'the most coveted'?"

Annabeth and Percy shook their heads, both distinctly paler than they had been moments before, which was quite a feat. It was Piper, the least affected by the unwanted reminder, that offered a suggestion. "Maybe it's not Tartarus at all."

Annabeth glanced towards her, swallowing in what appeared to be a visible effort to shrug off her uneasiness. "What do you mean?"

Piper glanced up at the sphinx with an accusing glare. "I mean, this is the sphinx, right? Her words are twisted and riddles themselves. I'd guess that she was attempting to play upon the answer that you'd jump to first."

Nico immediately agreed with the sentiment, if for nothing but the slight narrowing of the sphinx's glowing eyes and the faint hiss from the Hesperides. "You're probably right," he agreed. "Meaning the darkest place would be... where light couldn't access? Which is most likely -"

"The bottom of the ocean," Percy abruptly interrupted. There was sudden surety in his tone and he nodded. He spared a glance for Annabeth, a slight, strained smile touching his lips. "The depths of the ocean where no light can reach. That would be the most hidden from the light, right? Even Nyx's hideouts are only temporary, not always the darkest."

Annabeth nodded in agreement, glancing briefly up towards the sphinx. "And the deepest part of the ocean would be -"

"The Challenger Deep," Percy finished for her, turning towards the sphinx himself. "In the west Pacific ocean, the end of the Mariana Trench. Right?"

He sounded so sure in himself that Nico would have supposed the sphinx would agree within him even had Percy been wrong. He had the suspicion that he wasn't, however, and was reassured by the purring hum of the sphinx as she inclined her head. She didn't seem deterred in the least, as though gladdened by the chance to once more pose her riddled trivia question. The nymphs clearly didn't share her enthusiasm however; Nico noticed uneasily that they appeared to have drawn slightly closer to them. They would keep their promise not to attack, wouldn't they? If they answered all of the questions correctly, they wouldn't challenge the sphinx's oath, surely. Would they?

"Tell me," the sphinx quoted once more. "What is an apt substitute for time?"

Silence met her words once more, a ringing silence that was filled a moment later by a humming chuckle. Nico immediately felt himself seize tense with mounted worry once more. This was a twisted question, he could tell. The sphinx thought she had them caught with it, baffled. Which, he admitted, he at least very much was.

Nico glanced towards his friends, shifting his sword uneasily. That uneasiness only intensified with the blank confusion on each of their faces. "Any light bulb moments?"

They each glanced towards him in turn before slowly shaking their heads. "A substitute for time?" Annabeth said, voice wavering just barely. "What does that even mean?"

"Some sort of riddle?" Piper suggested.

Annabeth shook her head once more, glancing up towards the sphinx. "I thought... I thought the questions were all trivia." The sphinx's smile stretched impossibly wider and her thrumming purr seemed to pulse throughout the room.

"She's twisting her words," Percy said, stabbing Riptide towards the prowling monster accusingly as he turned to follow the passage of her steps along with the rest of them. "A substitute for time? What does that mean?"

"Is it the literal sense or the metaphorical?" Nico murmured, frowning in concentration. He was very aware of the nymph's silently circling footsteps. "Literally? I don't even..."

"There is none," Annabeth said uncertainly. "Time is a man-made concept. It can't be substituted because it doesn't even exist."

"Is that the answer then?" Percy asked. "Nothing? There is no substitute?" Annabeth only shook her head. She seemed less certain than she had been for any of the previous questions, glancing over her shoulder at the Hesperides just as Nico did.

"Maybe... maybe it is literal," Piper muttered. Nico glanced towards her, towards her downturned gaze and the frown of concentration. "Maybe it is literally time."

"What?" He asked, flinched slightly as one of the Hesperides - Erytheia, he thought it was - clicked her tongue in sharp impatience. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean," Piper said, glancing towards him. "Time."

"Meaning...?"

"Meaning time."

"I feel like I'm missing something here," Percy said, speaking Nico's thoughts.

"Oh, time," Annabeth said with dawning understanding. The uncertainty faded slightly from her face, replaced by a small smile that was still lacking in confidence but just slightly relieved. "Trust that you would think of that, Piper."

"What the hell are you two talking about?" Nico asked, glancing between the two of them."

"Time," Piper repeated. "As in the herb. Thyme."

Understanding finally presented itself. Nico nodded to indicate he was following them, sparing a glance for the blank smile of the sphinx overhead. "Oh. Right. Like seasoning or whatever?"

"Seasoning or whatever," Piper mimicked, shaking her head almost sorrowfully at his words. Her own tension wasn't quite masked by the jesting, but she made a good attempt at it. "You obviously don't cook."

"Obviously."

Piper ignored his confirmation and turned towards the sphinx. The sphinx's twitching tail was the only indication of disgruntlement that she presented. Her disconcerting smile hadn't faded even slightly. "There is no apt substitute for thyme. Not really. But a possible alternative, depending upon the dish itself, would be basil. Or oregano. Or perhaps marjoram." Piper nodded curtly. "Take your pick."

The sphinx paused slightly in step, paw raised. For a brief, heart-stopping second, Nico thought they had erred in their guess. Then the sphinx loosed her deep, thrumming purr and he felt himself sag slightly, even as his hand tightened on his sword. "Indeed," she rumbled.

"That's hardly fair," Piper objected, eyes narrowing and nearly stabbing herself with her sword and dagger as she attempted to fold her arms across her chest. "That was twisted. It was more of a riddle than anything."

The sphinx paused once more, turning slightly in her balance upon the balcony to regard Piper with a raised eyebrow. "A riddle? And you object to that?"

Piper's mouth hung open silently for a moment before she replied. Her tone was noticeably subdued for it. "It's just that... you twist your words. Choose either a riddle or trivia. The way you phrase things makes it almost impossible not to offer the wrong answer."

The sphinx was silent for a moment before she let out a faint chuckle. "Daughter of Aphrodite, I am the master of riddles. It is my duty to baffle and confuse with words. Perhaps a true riddle would more appease your tastes than knowledge coloured by artful words?"

"Artful words?" Percy asked. "No, I've got to agree with Piper. You're twisting words. There's a difference."

The sphinx ignored Percy and set about prowling once more. Nico heartily wished that both he and Piper would stop prodding her. Were they attempting to provoke her anger? Trying to make the questions even harder? "Riddle me this, then, if my previous requests have been so unsavoury," the sphinx finally said. "Why is a raven like a writing desk?"

Nico's mind briefly blanked in the ensuing bafflement that encompassed the room. When it rebooted it was with incredulity. His eyebrows rose as he stared at the prowling sphinx. "Lewis Carroll? You're quoting Lewis Carroll as a riddler?"

"What?" Percy asked, glancing towards him in confusion. "What does that mean?"

"Alice in Wonderland," Annabeth explained. She shared a glance with Nico. "Isn't it? The Mad Hatter's riddle to Alice? I've never read it myself but..."

Nico nodded, ignoring his detached incredulity that he had actually read a book that Annabeth hadn't. "Yeah. Something like that."

"It never answered it in the story, did it?" Piper said.

Nico met her sidelong glance with a briefly questioning frown. "You've read it?"

She shrugged uneasily, sparing a glance over her shoulder to the Hesperides. "A long time ago. Confusing book as it was, I swear he was high when he wrote most of it."

"So it didn't have the answer?" Percy asked, glancing up at the sphinx uneasily. "Is there even an answer?"

"Not exactly," Annabeth said, frowning herself. Her hand had risen to her chin in consideration, the deep thoughtfulness spreading across her face as though she was abruptly oblivious to the seriousness of their situation. "There are speculations but there are so many possible answers that it's impossible to tell which one is the correct one."

"Possible answers?" Piper asked. She shifted uneasily, gaze affixing back onto the sphinx as she prowled above them. "Do you know any of them? What do you think is the right one?"

"There are a few from various riddlers and literary enthusiasts," Annabeth replied, frown deepening into real worry. Nico could only agree with her unspoken deduction; he had no idea, felt thoroughly useless for his contribution to the situation. "I mean, if I were to hazard a guess, put my money behind one of them..." She pursed her lips. "It would be Sam Lloyd's interpretation. That they are similar in that 'the notes for which they are noted are not noted for being musical notes'."

Stunned silence met her words. Nico blinked at her in confusion for the tongue twisting response but it was Percy who spoke first, and remarkably eloquently at that. "What in Hades?"

Annabeth was shaking her head sharply in rising concern. Her expression tightened until she appeared almost drawn. "I'm not entirely sure, but that's –"

"How do you even know that?" Piper asked, shaking her own head.

"I read," Annabeth said, repeating her answer to the same question Piper had voiced before. Then she lifted her gaze towards the sphinx. "That's not even a real riddle," she accused. "It's the confounding and unanswerable question posed by a character expressly written to be mad. There is no answer but if there is... surely it is that." Her _'hopefully'_ was left unsaid, but it rung loud and clear nonetheless.

Nico turned to gaze up at the sphinx expectantly. Hopefully. Their fifth question, the likes of which would ensure their freedom if answered correctly. Hopefully... hopefully...

His hopes shattered to pieces as the sphinx's smile only widened further. It was a twisted expression, seeming to consume her entire face. She paused in her prowling, tail swiping like a lashing snake in her delight. "It is indeed the riddle of a madman, daughter of Athena, and yet a riddle nonetheless. A riddle which you," she paused for emphasis, chuckling in hungry delight, "have answered incorrectly." Her voice deepened into a growl that sounded nothing if not lecturing. "Wrong choice."

It was an unanswerable question, Nico realised. It would always be unanswerable, was designed to be such. There were countless possible answers and no matter that Annabeth had chosen one that fit the bill for the sphinx could simply chose another. Glee rippled the child of Echidna in audible barks of laughter even as defeat crashed atop of Nico. A sudden, resounding fear, unlike any he'd felt when he was hunting alone yet so similar to that he'd been assaulted by in recent weeks, struck him in a jarring blow. He wasn't scared, not for himself, hadn't been scared for a long time until... and now, again and again, he could do little to contain that mounting terror that welled within him at any given moment.

Nico's shoulders tightened alongside that of his grip on his sword hilt. A glance behind him stiffened them further as he saw the nymphs around him snap into stances of 'd lost. They'd been beaten and they would be attacked. It had been a wager and they had lost, and now they would face not just the nymphs but the sphinx as well. And just the four of them? How would they even survive that?

Even as the thought occurred to Nico the light faded like a dimmer being wound down on a switch. Nico knew even without the cruel smiles of the nymphs that they were the cause of their darkening surrounds. They were stealing the light. Again. And Nico and Annabeth, Percy and Piper – they would be blinded. Disabled before the combined attack of the sphinx and the nymphs of Hesperides. There was no way they could possibly win in such an instance.

Nico saw the nymphs raise their daggers. He saw from the corner his eye the sphinx crouch, wings raising and spreading like an eagle taking flight. They were the pathetically helpless prey wedged between the two forced. Forces that they would have to defeat.

But not necessarily now. Not here.

Nico made his decision.

"Fuck this," he growled, and, with a fluid movement, Nico sheathed his sword upon his back. As the sphinx launched herself from her perch, wide grin spreading madly, as the nymphs leapt forwards in attack, he lunged for his friends. As soon as his fingers touched the sleeves covering their arms, as soon as he was sure he had them all, he wrapped them in his shadows and threw them from the room.

The sound of a furious roar, the sudden and full-throated rage of the sphinx, hounded their escape.


	14. Chapter 14 - Vanquishing

**Chapter 14: Vanquishing**

It took Will all of five minutes of blind stumbling to come up with the bright idea that he didn't _need_ to subject himself to such blindness. Five minutes of crashing into stone walls, of bruising his shoulders and attempting to use his bow as a cane to feel along his passage as he ran. It was when he physically hit his head upon a wall – somehow managing it despite prodding his way with his bow-cane and supposedly approaching no such hurdle – that he had some sense knocked into him.

 _Fuck it, I'm an idiot. Why am I doing this to myself?_

Shaking his head at his own foolishness and transferring his bow to his right hand, Will raised his left and concentrated upon light. Upon the pureness and brightness of Apollo's radiance, his _actual_ radiance, not simply that which he perceived in his narcissistic persona. There was a brief struggle, more than Will was used to when calling upon the illuminating glow, and then his hand sprung into shining gold.

It continued to be a struggle, Will noted. Even when it had grown into glowing vibrancy, his own personal sunlight fought against the surrounding darkness like water seeping into sand at a beach. Will poured his direction into the light, and the darkness lapped it up hungrily. It was disconcerting to say the least; if Will had needed any further indication of the artificiality of the darkness it was afforded in the draining of his light. As it was, the glow from his skin barely stretched five feet around him before shadow encompassed his sights once more.

Shaking off his unease, Will glanced around himself. The corridor he found himself in was bare, long and with a high ceiling except for what appeared to be an archway set into the hall where was potentially once a door. It was that archway Will had walked straight into while his cane had passed through the opening. He glared at the doorway, fathoming that he could perhaps make his face-print out in then unyielding hardness for the force of his collision before stepping past it and continuing on down the corridor.

It was long, stretching, and broken only by turns and the occasional doorways that, upon jiggling the ancient, squeaking locks where doors still stood and peering inside, Will found to be as furnished and decorations as the corridors and entrance hall had been. It was eerie, that such a vast structure, that the entirety of the ruins that crisscrossed and extended like an unending maze, would be so devoid of… anything. It almost seemed like the perfect place for a battle to occur, with no hurdles and plenty of length to stretch one's legs in flight. At the thought, at the memory of the serpentine hissing that he'd witnessed in the entrance hall, Will couldn't help but pick up his pace a little.

He found no one. He came across none of his friends, nor any monsters, which he found both relieving and baffling. He'd _heard_ them. Why hadn't he come across any? If he were to hazard a guess, the hundred-headed serpent Ladon's children would be serpents of some kind, and if the sheer number of his heads was conveyed at all into the surplus of his children, he would similarly have hundreds of offspring. It was only an assumption, but one Will felt relatively confident in making. And yet no monsters. He didn't see a single one, didn't even hear any. In some ways that was almost worse than stumbling upon a horde.

 _If they're not coming after me, if I'm not seeing any, then where are they? Are they chasing everyone else? Are they targeting Nico? Hazel?_ The thought made Will feel increasingly ill with worry. Ladon was hunting the children of Hades after all. It would make sense that he would hound after Nico and Hazel, and that his children would do the same.

Why hadn't Will just grabbed him? If he'd had the forethought, he would have locked his fingers in their typical grasp and never let Nico go. He _always_ kept a hold of Nico for fear that he would simply vanish. Now it seemed that the one time he truly needed to he had been too slow. Again.

Will had to shake his head firmly at the thought. No. Nico wasn't gone. He hadn't run away from Will, or at least not in the concerning sense. Nico hadn't _left_ him. It was only temporary. It was.

If only Will could convince himself of that fact. He found his feet unconsciously picking up their pace.

He was approaching a T-junction when he finally heard a disruption of the unending silence. A distant sound at first, but loud for the utter muteness that Will was embedded in. A deep rumble, like an avalanche half a country away that could be sensed but not quite heard, that almost shook the walls with bone-deep vibrations. He stopped still, pausing with ears straining.

A long pause, a long moment of wait, and then Will heard it again. Deeper this time, louder. And another pause, then another rumble. The walls actually trembled with the force of that final quake and Will could physically hear the crash of something heavy striking into stone and shaking the ruins upon their foundations.

Then he heard the footsteps. Footsteps that were stumbling and thudding and scraping as though the runner was barely considering the direction they ran. Thudding, slapping, skidding, and then –

 _BOOM!_

The corridor bodily shuddered beneath the force of the crash. Will found himself dropping to a crouch, pressing his back against the wall before he'd even realised he was grounding himself. His bow was held aloft, glowing hand reaching back to grasp the feathered tail of an arrow. His eyes trained upon the T-section, upon the direction he'd heard the crash resound from, the direction of the footsteps. Something was approaching, something chasing someone, and though Will knew he could do little to help them with his bow and quarterstaff, it didn't mean he wouldn't try.

She spun around the corner so fast that Will at first didn't even recognise who she was at first. Spun, skidded, and then leap down his corridor with the speed of a fleeing antelope. Only to trip and tumble over Will as he failed to throw himself from her path before it was too late. A startled shriek sprung from her mouth, even as Will's breath gushed forth in an audible "Umph!" as her foot connected with his stomach. They rolled, tumbled, skidded for a moment and Will caught sight of heavy boots and thick parka, a cinnamon-coloured braid and wide golden eyes, before they slumped in a heap a full half-dozen feet from where he'd been crouching.

"Hazel!" Will exclaimed, both startled and relieved. Startled at the abruptness of her arrival and relieved that he had finally found _some_ body. "What are you –?"

Hazel's hand clamped across his mouth in an instant. She was lying half atop of him, an elbow jabbing almost painfully into his sternum. She met his eyes briefly, her own blown wide with pupils dilating and shrinking in spasms before the brightness of Will's glowing hand. Her own surprise at their collision had faded as suddenly as it had arisen, however, and with her hand still pressing over Will's lips so tightly he could almost feel his skull sinking into the floor beneath him, she pursed her lips in a shushing gesture. Her hand lifted from his lips to press a finger against her own. Then, with wary slowness, she turned her head to glance over her shoulder.

That was when Will heard it. Heard the gravely sliding of something hard yet malleable scraping against stone and growing louder as it approached. Then he heard the hisses. Lots of hisses, small and sharp and yet most nearly drowned out by one overwhelming louder that hummed like a swarm of bees.

"Is that… Ladon?" Will whispered so quietly he was mouthing his words more than speaking them.

Hazel, glancing at him sidelong, gave a faint nod of her head before whispering just as quietly. "And about a whole army of his offspring. Don't move, don't speak, and try not to even _breathe_ too loudly. I'm going to try to…"

Will didn't need to ask what Hazel was going to 'try' to do. Shifting so that her elbow jabbed even sharply into his chest once more, she turned more fully back in the direction she had come. Her braid slithered over her shoulder and smacked Will in the face but he hardly even noticed the mouthful of hair he was afforded. His attention was trained on Hazel, upon her raised hand and the faint blurriness that was just visible in the radiating light of his hand. The Mist. Hazel's magic – she was using her Mist. To hide them? To cast an illusion or to draw attention down the adjacent corridor? Will wasn't sure.

Had he any inclination to continue speaking, to struggle and draw attention to himself, that urge would have been wiped clean the moment he saw the approaching monster. Or more correctly, monsters. The offspring came first, just visible in the residue of Will's glowing light. A veritable army of snakes of different shapes, sizes and threatening demeanours, just as Hazel had said. He saw a giant cobra pause to raise itself from the pool of its fellows and flare its hood, saw an anaconda lazing with slow undulation through the mix, heard the distinctive chattering of rattlesnakes as they paused in their flow to express their aggressive indignation of the pushing and shoving of their siblings. The only feature that was consistent amongst them was the metallic sheen of their scales, even more pronounced than any normal snakes should have been. Silver and gold, bronze and polished iron, some that appeared faintly tarnished but for the glimmer of reflectiveness beneath the smudging black. None even glanced down the corridor that Will and Hazel sprawled in, both barely further than lunging distance from the largest of the creatures. Will felt his fight or flight instinct swing very definitely towards the latter for the sheer amount of serpents.

And then he saw Ladon.

He wasn't a snake. Or at least not a single snake. Nor even remotely similar to any that Will had ever seen, and certainly not like its offspring. He more closely resembled his brother, the Colchian Dragon, than the creatures that swarmed beneath him; they looked like earthworms for the sheer discrepancy in their sizes. The stretching length of torso that slid into view was as wide as a cement truck. Will was surprised it could even fit through the corridor without crushing its children.

And then there was his head. His _heads_. So many of them that Will would have lost count had he attempted to gauge their number, each as different in species and size as the snakes that swarmed beneath him like a rippling carpet. He knew there were one hundred, one hundred exactly, but he could have sworn there were more. Each flicked their tongues forwards with varying frequency, blue and black and pink and pale tongues slipping like flapping ribbons from mouths and between barely glimpsed fangs. Ladon's length wove and wavered down the corridor that the smaller snakes flowed upon and blessedly didn't look towards Will and Hazel even once. Hazel really was working her magic, and not without strain it would seem. He could feel her beginning to tremble on top of him from the physical stress.

Ladon may have passed by without glancing their way. He may have taken his children elsewhere, if only briefly. Long enough for Will and Hazel to regroup with the rest of their friends, to find Nico before facing him. Except then Kayla's voice rung down the hallway.

"Will? Is that you? I can see your light. Is that -?"

Like a magnet, every visible head of the passing snakes whipped towards them. Ladon, his own monstrous multitude of heads mostly passed the corridor already, drew backwards with such speed that Will was sure he crushed dozens if not hundreds of his children. The bee swarm hissing, the loudest of them all, sounded once more amidst the low, resonating words, " _Ah. Ffffound you, little rabbit!"_

Ladon was fast but Hazel was faster. In a springing leap to her feet, flying from Will's chest as if she possessed Jason's gift of flight, she was hauling Will to his own before he even managed to get his breath back. Hauling, then dragging without a backwards glance, she set off at a sprint down the corridor. The sound of a crack, a _BOOM!_ and a crumble as Ladon evidently swung to follow chased their steps.

They nearly ploughed into Kayla – and Thalia, unexpectedly – who started at their sudden appearance. Will only had time to bellow "Run!" before Hazel was dragging him through them. Neither Kayla nor Thalia paused to ask questions.

Will couldn't see where they were going. Even with the light radiating from his hand, the speed at which they travelled and the lunging swings of their turns blurred any perception of space and distance. Will didn't really care. Hazel seemed to have some sort of idea where she was leading him, and her grasp remained firmly upon Will's wrist, bitingly tight. His feet sped with a will of their own down the passage, a ringing slap that jarred discordantly alongside those of his friends and yet barely audible for the hissing pursuit of the snakes and their father.

"Hazel!" Thalia exclaimed from over Will's shoulder. "What -?"

"Don't talk," Hazel threw back at her. "Just run."

"But where are we -?"

"The front room. I want to – take him – to the front room. More space. Then – outside. " Hazel's words stopped and started between her steps and pants. She nearly threw Will into a wall when they rounded another corridor.

"The entrance hall?" Will asked between his own panting breaths. "Do you even know where you're going?"

Hazel only seemed to speed her step for his question. "Of course. I can – feel the stone."

 _Oh right,_ Will thought, mentally chiding himself. Of course. Hazel had as much of a feel for the earth, could conjure gems and precious stone from the ground as well as she could cast magic. Better, even, more instinctively. Just like Nico used his shadows. Will thought nothing else on the matter as he continued to run.

He heard Thalia and Kayla shoot. He heard the thrums of their bows as they loosed arrows, likely when they felt their pursuers were too close on their tail. Will glanced over his shoulder, wishing desperately that he could join them even though he knew that, compared to the both of them, he was a mediocre shot at best. The snakes – and certainly Ladon – likely had some kind of reinforced skin, armoured scales perhaps that would have deflected any shots fired even slightly skewed. Instead, Will focused on pushing his light forth, fighting against the hungry darkness that strove to consume that which illuminated their way. To bring the walls into sharp relief, to direct them in their path and to hopefully avoid any unnecessary collisions. He thought it helped. He hoped it did.

They spewed into the entrance hall with a speed that nearly sent them all tumbling onto the floor of the cavernous room. It was still dark, the windows still somehow smothered with blackness. With a struggle, as they swept across the room, Will pushed his light further, brighter, more forcefully until it illuminated even the distant walls. It drew a sweat from his brow that had nothing to do with the faint weariness of his limbs from their tearing sprint. That sweat chilled when he beheld the carpet of serpents that lay between them and the closed door of the entrance.

Hazel noticed as well, just in time to skid to a stop instead of ploughing straight into them. Will nearly slammed into her back, only just backpedalling in time to avoid the collision, and immediately raised his bow. His bow which, with barely a thought, he tapped into a quarterstaff with its familiar _ping_.

"We're trapped," Hazel panted harshly, though she sounded more angry than worried, as though wondering how _dare_ the snakes think to stand between her and her freedom.

Will glanced over his shoulder at Kayla and Thalia, at the flood of snakes that flowed after them and spread into the entrance hall. At Ladon, the hundred-headed dragon seeming abruptly larger as he squeezed itself through the tunnel-opening of the corridor and reared tall like a viper preparing to strike. Or several dozen vipers for the number of mouths that snapped open with a hiss to reveal slick, ivory fangs that seemed ready to drip poison.

Percy had always said he was terrified of Ladon. That the prospect of facing the child of Echidna, the guardian of the Garden of Hesperides, unnerved him like almost none other. And that was with the knowledge that he'd faced _Gaea_ , not to mention countless giants, monsters, Gods even. Facing Ladon as he was, sidelong so that he and his friends created a back-to-back ring of mutual support to face their foes, Will thought he suspected why.

Ladon was huge. Enormous in a way that the Colchian Dragon, that the Nemean Lion, that the Caucasian Eagle and apparently Scylla had been. Copper scales reflected off of Will's light, almost burgundy for the contrasting dark and lightness. The thick mass of his body, of his serpentine coils, looped and folded over himself, tail still stretching into the tunnel from which he'd come. But it was the heads, the countless heads of darting tongues and yawning jaws spread threateningly, the manes and frills of scales, hoods and slick skull-caps, that was more intimidating. The largest, that which stood tallest, looming and seeming to lick its lipless jaws hungrily. It was the heads and the eyes, all two-hundred of them, black and beady and unblinking and staring. Staring straight at Will and his friends, or perhaps more correctly at Hazel. His target. Even for their flatness, Will swore he could discern hatred, fury and vengeance welling within every eye.

Will felt the familiar tightening of fear spreading from his gut and tingling along his limbs. He drew his gaze in a swift scan around himself, at the moat of snakes that looped in a roiling, twisting mass though not quite approaching, as though waiting. For what, Will knew not – some sort of order? The word 'go'?

His gaze snapped back to Ladon an instant later as the many-headed serpent spoke. " _I have fffound you, daughter of Hadesss. Like a little rabbit you may ffflee, but even a rabbit leeeavesss a trail for the hungry sssnake to ffffollow_."

Will felt a shiver seize his spine, and not only for the words themselves. It was they way that they were said, in a sibilant hiss dripping with malice. It was that every head spoke at once, jaws opening and closing in an almost human-like manner and an array of voices spouting from each. Strangers voices but, more horribly, voices that Will could swear were familiar. A memory of his history lessons returned to him, that as Ladon possessed many heads he also assumed many voices. Will could hear his mother in those words, could hear a mimic of his father, of something that might have been Nico, one that was almost Lou Ellen, or Cecil, Austin or even his sister Fionn who he hadn't seen in what felt like years.

A trick. It was a trick to unnerve them, he knew. To distract, even as the pungent smell of acid seeped into the air with the monster's breath arose. The shiver that coursed through Will's limbs once more set almost a quaking tremble through him, even as he knew it was misplaced. Fearful? Of voices? He should be more fearful of the acidic saliva that dripped from the fangs of countless heads. But he wasn't.

His fear was momentarily waylaid, however, when Hazel, head turned to glance over her shoulder at Ladon, narrowed her eyes and curled her lip in a way that resembled Nico in his anger and was utterly terrifying for it. "A rabbit? You couldn't catch a rabbit if it was sitting trapped and unmoving right before your eyes."

Ladon released another surplus of hisses, echoed by the twisting, writhing offspring that Will swore had drawn closer to them like a constricting python. Then, even more horribly, the heads laughed. Will cringed as he could make out the twisted versions of his mother's laugh, of Fionn's, most horribly of Nico's in a cackling sound that Nico would _never_ utter. That realisation, even as it disconcerted him, steadied Will. It wasn't Nico, or his mother. This was a creature bent on destroying him and his friends, on throwing them for a loop to do so. His hand tightened on his quarterstaff as he turned a glare upon Ladon. It was difficult in the face of those ever-watchful eyes, but he managed.

Hazel managed even better. At Ladon's laughter, she lifted her chin and stabbed his largest head with a glare that should have slayed him where he reared. When she spoke, her voice was a low, determined mutter. "We need to get outside. Between walls we're certain to get crushed."

"Easier said than done," Thalia murmured back, her own eyes narrowed towards Ladon with fingers opening and closing upon her bow. "There's the little issue of the snakes and one very big snake in particular."

"Then we do the best we can," Will said with a determined nod of his own, giving another firm push of his light to further brighten their surroundings. He hoped it seemed more confident than he felt.

Evidently he did for the uncertainty in Kayla's gaze seemed to slip slightly as Hazel nodded and replied. "We do the best we can. If you guys think you can clear enough of the snakes to get through, I'll focus on Ladon."

" _Of what do you ssspeak, little rabbitsss?"_ Ladon interrupted them in his many voices. _"Ssseeking to be plotting and plllanning?"_

Will was proud of the fact that, looming and slowly approaching as he was, none of them batted an eyelid. He shook his head at Hazel's words, even as he kept an eye trained upon Ladon's weaving heads, the tallest nearly touching the roof. "That's ridiculous. You'll get yourself killed if it's just you."

"But –"

"We fight together," Thalia agreed, overriding Hazel's objection. "Teams of two, yeah?" Surprisingly, she glanced towards Will, as though confirming an unspoken plan they shared. Which, Will realised, they did. He nodded her to continue. "You and me, Will. We'll wipe out these snakes. You two," she gestured towards Kayla and Hazel. "Distract the daddy snake."

"Distract?" Kayla asked, her tone for once subdued. "Don't you mean –?"

"Don't think we'll be able to kill him," Will overrode her, very aware of Ladon's slowly looming and rising proximity. "Not with just the four of us."

Thalia nodded her agreement. "The best we can do –"

She didn't get a chance to say more. None of them did, for a moment later Ladon lunged.

Will threw himself to the side, rolling across the hard stone floor and immediately jumping to his feet when he cleared the branching heads of the monster. He spared only a brief glance over his shoulder, a glance to see Hazel raise her hands with the fuzziness of Mist shrouding her even as jewels appeared to spring from cracking craters in the floor. Will saw Kayla rolling to her own feet an arrow already fired before she was even upright. An arrow that exploded, whatever dynamite it was laced with erupting on impact to the startled shrieks and wails of Ladon's heads. Then he turned, for he didn't have time to see more. He didn't have time to spare, for a second later the snakes that surrounded him lunged towards him.

Will swung his quarterstaff in a spinning wheel. He thanked for the thousandth time Leo's ingenuity in somehow constructing it with Celestial bronze without impinging on the bow's firing capacity, for as his weapon struck the glistening and glittering metallic scales of the monster spawn, it shattered them like fractured glass blown to dust.

A swing, a spin, a twirling dance as much at head height as about his legs for the bodily leaping of snakes for his face. Will struck and spun, jumping and diving, whacking with full strength and smiting the creatures into smithereens. Within minutes, seconds even, his boots were half buried in golden dust.

Monsters. Not just snakes, they were monsters. Their deaths, the explosions into dust, proved it if nothing else did. And they came in their hundreds, a never-ending wave that Will noticed distractedly as resembling the battle against the Colchian Dragon's drakons. Only distantly, however. Even his fear, his concern for his friends, his worry for those he couldn't see, registered only on the edges of his awareness. He was abruptly focused, determined, eyes narrowed and concentrated on the spinning windmills of his staff even as he strove to maintain the full force of his glowing hand. It was a juggling act that he just managed to pull off.

Will barely registered what was going on around him. Briefly, glancing up only for a split second every other minute, he saw Kayla diving from a strike of another score of Ladon-heads, barely missing being crushed before shooting a trio of arrows in quick succession. He glimpsed Thalia, her bow exchanged for a sword of Celestial bronze that spun and sliced and parried like that of a master swordsman. And he saw Hazel. Just briefly, just barely, but he saw her.

Will had never seen Hazel fight. Not really, or at least not for years. With the exception of against Cerberus, which hadn't really been a fight, they just hadn't been around one another. Will would accompany Nico, and Nico and Hazel made a point of ensuring they had 'less competent' friends with them than one another. Leo's words, not theirs, but acknowledged by them all as true nonetheless.

Hazel's competency was demonstrated in full force from the snatches of fighting Will caught sight of. She didn't dive into the shadows like Nico did but the speed she moved at was almost as fast. She leapt and dodged, throwing up handfuls of jewels, of diamonds and rubies, of quartz and turquoise, and fired them with pelting force towards Ladon in jagged, precious bullets. Her Stygian spatha drawn, the obsidian length sucking the light from the air as surely as the leeching shadows, swiped at any head that dared to snap too close. Heads fell severed, both those from Ladon and his children who dared to approach her.

And her illusions. Her manipulation of the Mist. Will had never seen that before. She sent mimics of snakes towards Ladon that crawled across his coils, conjured phantom warriors racing around him with swords drawn and momentarily capturing his attention. Unnervingly, mirror images of Hazel herself sprung into existence, nearly raking a cry from Will when he saw one fall to the jaws of a particularly large head, only to dissipate in a puff of Misty smoke. Heatless fire sprung into existence to loom and blaze before Ladon smothered it with a thick coil of his body, an unfelt wind wailing from the walls in a visible haze that momentarily blinded, pitfalls springing from the ground and a brick wall suddenly erected to disappear beneath Ladon's strike without a crumble.

Hazel was incredible. A different kind of fighting to Nico entirely, but incredible nonetheless. Will nearly lost his staff to the strike of a snake for his momentary distraction at one point.

Offspring fell beneath Will's staff, thickening the air with dust. Thalia cut and sliced like an expert chef preparing snake shish kebabs. Explosions and bursts of what looked like Greek fire sprung from Kayla's arrows as often as she shot the Hydra arrows with deadly accuracy at Ladon's eyes. And Ladon's heads were lopped off with a fury from Hazel's sword. Sometimes she clearly struck, only for even her Stygian sword to rebound harmlessly, but just as often the smaller head tumbled to the ground.

They were almost going well. Winning, even. The pool of monsters, of offspring that Will struggled to batter away from their father, Hazel and Kayla, almost seemed to be lessening. Except that, with a start, Will realised that those heads Hazel hacked off didn't remain absented from their necks for long, only regrowing with horrifying speed. That, and those heads chopped off still writhed and wriggled, like lizard's tails twitching with ensuing animation, before sliced necks extended and morphed into more children.

Will was fairly certain he knew how the children of Ladon were born. Born or created, in a sick, twisted manner vaguely reminiscent of the hydra.

Swinging to smack a jarring blow at a lunging anaconda, Will spared a second to shout across the room. "Hazel! The heads! Stop – they're just regenerating more snakes!" Then he turned back to the onslaught of snakes even before he could discern if Hazel had heard him.

When he glanced her way again, it was to see that she had. Her illusions sprung to life once more, but that wasn't what drew his attention, attention momentarily distracted by a trio of identical vipers lunging towards him. Another glance her way say Ladon's head's jabbing and snapping at the illusionary Hazel's like a whack-a-mole and Hazel herself, or what he suspected to be the real Hazel, sprinting around behind his back. In a second she had alighted onto Ladon's back, somehow scaling the slick length of his thick neck almost before Ladon had noticed her. She climbed, clambering up the tallest neck and paused only to draw back her sword.

Too slowly. Only _just_ too slowly.

Will didn't see it happen. He was distracted by the horde of snakes who he suspected, he hoped, had slightly eased in their number. A copper-green monster the size of a javelin struck at him from one side while a silvery one twice as long as he was tall lunged from the other. He batted both aside, casting one across the room over the heads of its fellows as the other burst into dust. Then he heard Hazel scream.

A blurring glance her way saw her with her sword embedded in the largest of Ladon's heads, the head the size of the puppet T-Rex from Jurassic Park. But that wasn't what caused Will to seize in horror. It was the two other heads, both nearly as large, extended towards her with jaws clamped one around Hazel's midsection and the other grasping her leg. He could only pause for a moment, however, only a second to think _Gods, no!_ before he was thrown back into defending himself.

Hazel fought it. Even half-eaten as she was, she fought to wrench her sword free of the barely damaged scales. She fought, and she swung, thrust and stabbed again and again in an effort to puncture, even as the jaws clamped on her more tightly with a crunch that Will could swore he heard. From the corner of his eye as he spun in a twirl to strike down a pair of adders, he saw Hazel swipe again, in a different direction, with a feebler arm. He saw her black sword descend once, twice, on each head. Forcefully, fiercely enough that they jerked away with simultaneous hisses of pain. And Hazel fell.

Will didn't have the time to dart beneath her tumbling form. Neither did Kayla, yelling with a cry and only speeding the firing of her arrows as she ran towards her. Nor did Thalia, nearly swamped beneath her own sea of foes. Will heard himself cry out Hazel's name, spun towards her if only to see he couldn't _do_ anything. He saw her plummet, saw Ladon rear his weaving heads with jaws spread wide, the dark colour of his blood pumping in bursts from the strike Hazel had managed – she'd managed! – to puncture into his neck, and lunge after her.

And Will saw the eagle swoop from nowhere, snatch Hazel from the air with spreading talons and fold in a diving roll to avoid the snapping jaws. A giant golden eagle that for a moment Will thought might have been a child of the Caucasian eagle before he realised it wasn't. Ladon screeched in anger, making a snapping strike for its passage, but the eagle avoided it deftly, cradling Hazel in its claws.

Will didn't have time for relief. He didn't have time for confusion either, to fully register _eagle? – What? – Why?_ before he was forced back to concentrating upon avoiding being struck by the snakes around him. He knew he had acquired injuries – it would have been impossible not to have – but he was still mobile. Still able to fight. Still able to spare a glance for the flight of the eagle as it tore towards the fringes of where his projected light hung and dropped to the floor in a straining quiver.

The eagle became Frank an instant later. Frank, who eased a barely conscious and sharply panting Hazel to the ground before rising into a defensive stance with a ferocious snarl upon his face. He looked like a bear for his heavy jacket, broad, hunching shoulders and audible growl. A bear with claw-like sword drawn, his bow discarded somewhere Will couldn't see. And yet he was barely a kitten before the lion size of Ladon, the hundred-headed snake descending towards him; a kitten that looked ready to gnaw the monster to pieces if it would take him a whole year.

Will needed to help. He longed to rush to Frank's side, to provide his assistance. Yet he was embedded in the striking, angrily spitting jaws of Ladon's children. Their number was decreasing, dropping from what felt like thousands to merely hundreds with those pouring from the tunnels lessening to barely more than a trickle. But not fast enough. Not fast enough for Will to offer his aid, for Kayla to escape the sudden onslaught of the offspring that seemed to focus upon her with Ladon's distraction, or Thalia who was snarling nearly as fiercely as Frank as she struck those around her with slicing, parrying blows.

They didn't have a chance. None of them could kill Ladon, not without Hazel or Nico who Will was actually almost relieved was absent in that moment. No one could truly take down the child of Echidna, the hundred-headed serpent who was weaving towards Hazel and Frank, honing in like a falcon with a rabbit in its sights. They didn't stand a chance, it was a lost cause and Hazel – resilient, desperate Hazel, struggling to clamber to her feet – was slumping and fading, blood dribbling onto the floor in a smearing mess. They didn't have a chance.

Until _they_ arrived.

Will wasn't sure which were the first to actually appear. He thought it might have been Jason and Reyna, tugging open the doors to the ruins with a heaving effort that appeared far more than that which they'd previously used to enter the entrance hall the first time. Light spilled into the room, natural light reflecting white from the snow beyond, encompassing even the feeble remains of Will's own light. Ladon, drawn towards the front door by Frank's station before Hazel, hissed in increasing volume that quickly rose to a shriek, rearing backwards from the doors as though distressed by the abusive light.

At the same time, Nico appeared. And though he did – he truly did – suspect that Jason and Reyna arrived first, in the midst of his batting away snakes Will was immediately drawn to the spawning shadows that punctured his conjured light and Nico's arrival in the entrance hall. And Percy, Piper and Annabeth, he noted, but barely even spared them a thought in the face of his profound relief for – _Nico, thank the Gods, he's alright, he's safe… even if he did just appear within striking distance of Ladon_ and the simultaneously fearful _dammit, Nico, what are you even doing here now?!_

Nico didn't answer his silent question. Will wasn't even sure if he saw him at all. He burst from his shadows and, to Will's suddenly distracted sight, drew in the critical status of the scene in an instant. Alongside an immediately battle ready Percy, Annabeth and Piper, he leapt into action.

The action of flight.

Percy sprung to Will's side in an instant, even as Piper ran to Kayla's and Annabeth to Thalia's. In the same second that Nico snarled in a sudden fury almost identical to Hazels but minutes before and launched himself into a curtain of shadows once more. Will didn't know where he went but he could only hope it was Away. With a swiping strike of his sword, spinning and twirling and hacking and slicing like the demon that he was, Percy ploughed through the snake-offspring with a blossoming energy to replace Will's ailing strength. Even with release of his glowing light, his hand fading back to skin colour, Will his weariness rise profoundly when support arrived.

Percy evidently perceived it too, for he grabbed Will's arm and pulled him rather than coaching him towards where Jason and Reyna guarded the door, striking with their swords and daggers at any snake who dared drift too closely and calling out demands of "Come on!" and "Hurry! This way!" as though the rest of them didn't feel the immediate draw of the outside anyway. Percy paused in his sword-wielding long enough to speak directly into Will's ear. "Come on, Will, you're good. You did good. Just help us get out of here, drag Ladon out into the light, and you'll be able to take a break."

Will didn't care for coaxing coddling, not from anyone, but in that moment he couldn't be bothered to object. He barely even heard the words at all. The release of his light magic seemed to have drained him more than its maintenance did, and when he slowed in his furiously fighting defence it settled upon him more pronouncedly. But at Percy's voice ringing in his ear, Will steeled himself. He had friends to support, friends to save, and he and Kayla would need to see to Hazel immediately. There was acid or venom of some sort in Ladon's fangs and he didn't like the thought of what it was doing to Hazel.

They ran. Leaping and dodging snakes as much as vanquishing them, Will ran alongside Percy as the rest of his friends made for the door. Frank had slung Hazel into his arms once more and was leading the charge, ploughing through snakes as though they really were nothing but earthworms in his determination to be out of the room. And Ladon… Will only had a moment to glance over his shoulder to see the monster waylaid somehow before he was dropping his attention to avoiding the mine-traps of the snakes.

Too many. There were too many to avoid. Will didn't know if they would ever get past them, through them, before Ladon turned his attention towards their attempted flight. They needed something, a pause, a brief respite. Just for a moment.

Will raised his fingers to his lips, drew a deep breath as he pressed upon his folded tongue and whistled.

The sound was deafening. Deafening and jarring, and likely shattered the senses of his friends as much as the snakes. The ultrasonic vibes of his whistle, a gift from his father, exceeded the auditory spectrum to vibrate the very air. It sent each snake flinching and tucking to the ground in writhing heaps. Just for a moment, only for a second, but it was all Will needed. It was all his friends needed, before they were leaping over the cringing monsters and bursting through the door.

They ran. They continued to run as though the hounds of hell were on their tails. Will pelted across he courtyard, passing through the perimeter of the stone walls to stumble into the snow beyond. He was barely aware of the chill of winter, of the iciness of the wind that hadn't been there before they'd entered the ruins slipping beneath his jacket. Will could feel more than see the swarm of his friends around him, fleeing in step without any but Thalia sparing a moment to shoot continued attacks over their shoulders. Will's breath gasped in white smoke before him to be left behind seconds later, filtering in his wake in the direction of the snakes that, a frantic glance over his shoulder proved had stopped in the courtyard before as though a physical barrier had been erected.

All of them except Ladon, that was. Ladon who, disregarding the coldness of snow pressed directly against his copper scales, burst through the doorway, crossed the courtyard and passed the wall with a roaring shriek of rage. He was even more terrifying in the brightness of the sun, more than he had been in the darkness. Light refracted and bounced dazzlingly off his multi-coloured heads, jaws snapped and spat visible flecks of venom that seemed to singe the air, the full gigantic proportions of his body made even more starkly apparent in the morning light. It loomed taller than the ruins' walls themselves.

Yet even with such an intimidating sight, the giant of a monster made only more intimidating by the streaks of dark blood that painted its necks, Will ground to a halt in a shower of snow. He had to, because springing and darting before him, slipping into shadows barely a second before a set of jaws lunged and descended upon where he'd been, Nico attacked him. Alone.

Will spun. He'd raised his quarterstaff and bodily thrown himself back in the direction that Nico dragged Ladon's attention, leaping between shadows like stepping-stones as he prodded it with darting strikes and only just avoiding being struck. Except Percy at Will's side with a sudden grasp so strong that it shouldn't have been human though probably only appeared as such to Will's weary weakness. "Will, don't –"

"Percy, let go! I have to – Nico is –"

"He's fine," Percy barked back, dragging Will into a shambling backwards run once more. He didn't sound exactly certain, though if anything seemed vexed by his uncertainty and worry for Nico. "Nico's drawing him after us where we _will_ fight him. But we need to get away from that place _now_ , draw Ladon away far enough that we can kill him before the sphinx arrives. Dammit, Will, we can't do anything yet!"

Percy's words didn't make sense. The sphinx? They were hunting Ladon, not the sphinx. _It didn't make sense, and Nico was… he was in danger, he was –_

Will struggled once more, struggled to free himself of Percy's hold. He didn't manage and had to subject himself to the impossible. To nearly tear himself apart as, right before him, bounding and leaping, twisting and ducking, Nico taunted the hundred-headed monster into chase him, distracting him from tearing after the rest of them. He didn't want to, but Percy wouldn't let go. It was all Will could do to maintain his feet and still run.

They nearly tumbled down the slight incline away form the ruins until they were nothing more than a medieval version of a doll's house perched amidst their orchards. Will barely looked where he was going, his head turned towards Nico and the deathly game of catch he was playing with Ladon. He didn't notice that his friends had stopped on the flat ground until Percy finally let him go as he paused himself.

Frank drew his attention instantly. With a barely conscious Hazel in his arms and face stretched in worry and fear, Frank cradled her as though she were a china doll. Will let himself be jostled to the side, almost dragged from the direct line of Ladon's descent in their wake, by Frank's demanding attentions. "Help her," was all he said. His voice was a desperate plea.

Will, even with his distraction, even with his attention drawn again and again almost unshakeably towards Nico as he fought Ladon _alone_ and wanted nothing more than to race to his side, could only oblige. Without a word, he dropped to his knees beside where Frank had lowered a now-unconscious Hazel. Mechanical fingers immediately set about grabbing for ambrosia, drawing aside Hazel's clothes to reveal the mess of tears and injuries beneath without bothering a wince. He set to work.

 _Puncture wounds, bite wounds – mid chest, abdomen, right upper thigh, right lower calf._

 _Cutaneous burn, full-thickness injury into the subcutaneous layer, perforation of internal organs increasing._

 _Break to third and fourth ribs, right, fourth and fifth ribs left, clean snaps…_

One after the other the diagnoses spilled forth to Will's sixth sense. He couldn't have stopped them flooding his mind had he wanted to.

It was because he was a son of Apollo, Will knew. A child of Apollo would immediately become focused upon the injured, no matter what distractions surrounded the circumstances. Kayla was likely only unaffected because she was at least fifty feet away with her gaze trained upon Ladon. Upon Nico –

 _Nico, oh Gods, Nico with Ladon, being attacked by Ladon, in danger, he's in danger –_

\- who drew closer and closer by the second. And then suddenly, barely a hundred feet from Will, he stopped. He was drawn to a halt, forced to stop, because as one, like choreographed dancers, Nico and Kayla, Thalia and Reyna, Percy and Annabeth and Jason and Piper – they all fell upon him. They attacked, with single-minded determination.

Will only caught glimpses as he worked. He was aware of the moment Frank, with an evident struggle, launched himself from Hazel's side into his golden eagle form and soared towards Ladon to strike at his heads with talons bared.

He saw Kayla, resorting solely to her hydra arrows as she'd evidently used her fill of the exploding missiles, set to puncturing the necks of the smaller heads until they slumped dead but not detached with Thalia firing viciously at her side.

He glimpsed Jason darting and soaring around the upper heads, the larger ones, managing to call upon bursts of lightning to zap at those that drifted to close and smiting those largest into dizziness that slumped into unconsciousness.

He watched as Reyna boost Piper onto Ladon's back before being hauled up herself, racing to the base of Ladon's neck to strike at the darting heads from a different angle.

He saw Percy and Annabeth darting forwards like striking vipers themselves, batting at the heads with single-minded determination even when the strength of their swords failed to pierce the armour of Ladon's scales.

And he saw Nico. He saw as Nico, his Nico, dived and ducked between shadows. He glimpsed with wide, fear-filled eyes as Nico dodged and disappeared into shadow in mid-air, as he reappeared barely a foot away to slice at the monster's heads and necks with his Stygian sword, smashing holes in the sheet-armour scales for Kayla and Thalia's arrows to pierce before disappearing once more. Will saw as he struck and thrust at the puncture wound that Hazel had already opened.

It was a fierce fight. Brutal, and not without blows to their party. Will flinched with his head bowed over Hazel and fingers frantically working as he heard Annabeth curse in an exclamation of pain, the injured cries of those he couldn't immediately identify as they were struck or bitten, knocked from their feet and thrown into the snow, of Piper's shout of "Jason!" followed by a smacking collision that could only be Jason fall from the air. It was, Will noticed with a brief glance up from Hazel, but even winded and likely injured as he was Jason had already launched himself back into the sky.

Because they were the best. Of their generation, perhaps ever to have arisen, Will knew that his friends were _the_ best that could possibly be. The best fighters, the best demigods, the strongest, the fastest, the smartest. If anyone could defeat Ladon it would be them. And faster than should have been possible, in barely minutes…

It happened in three rapid steps.

Frank and Jason each dove at the two heads alongside the largest, drawing their attention away.

Kayla and Thalia fired arrows at the T-Rex-sized head and each managed to pierce an eye to a roar of pained fury and violent snapping.

And Nico struck. In an abrupt appearance, springing from the shadows right behind Ladon's head, he dove straight for the punctured scales at the back of Ladon's largest head. In a stab that had the force of his full weight behind it, Nico thrust his Stygian sword into the monster. Will saw it all, in a brief glance from his padding and bandaging to witness. He couldn't look away.

Nico's face, even from a distance as Will could see, was set in cold, determined focus. In anger, unyieldingly driven in ferocity. In resignation he barely even attempted to mask because Will knew that even in the midst of the frenzy he hated what he was doing. Hanging as though he weren't suspended the height of a five-storey building off the ground, feet propped up as though abseiling and both hands clasped around the hilt of his sword, Nico pushed it deeper, more firmly.

Ladon froze. His lunging, snapping heads paused in their attacks. The monster froze as though he'd been petrified by Medusa's merciless gaze. Will watched, captivated, hands suspended above Hazel's prone form. He couldn't look away and he wasn't the only one.

All of his friends, even Frank in his eagle form, even Jason now on foot, had been rendered immobile before Ladon, though their weapons were still raised and gazes still wary. They watched, all of them, as Ladon's largest head, jaws flared wide and still dripping with acid that fizzled through the air as it fell. They stared as Nico, similarly immobilised and face still hardened and set, waited. And hoped.

Until Ladon began to dissolve. Slowly at first, as if crumbling, and then quickly dissipating into golden flecks of dust that clogged the air. Will had to raise his hands to cover his eyes, to cover Hazel's face, as it erupted and billowed even as far as he was crouched, coating the sand in gold leaf.

Then Nico fell. As soon as Ladon turned into a dust cloud, his sword slipped free of the solid penetration and Will watched as he plummeted towards the snow-covered earth. He didn't have a moment to register his sudden fear, to call out in distress even if he felt himself half rise to his feet in a sudden jerk. Barely halfway into his fall, Nico folded himself into a window of shadow and reappeared in a swirl of darkness on the ground directly below. The snow puffed and scattered at his landing, golden snow for the dust that caked it. He was the only one that moved, even after the monster – _the monster_ , Ladon, the bloody hundred-headed serpent and child of Echidna – had disappeared.

Will hadn't been involved in the fight, but he was still breathing heavily. It must have been more from fear than from physical exhaustion for he hadn't done more than work over Hazel for the last few minutes. But Hazel was fine now, unconscious but as fine as she could be with the taste of ambrosia on her tongue and the acid-burnt puncture wounds looking more like week old injuries than that of barely minutes. His attention was fixed firmly and solely upon Nico now. Nico himself stood in the carpet of golden dust and panted heavily. He spared a glance, an odd mixture of distaste and satisfaction, for his sword before sheathing it with a snap over his shoulder.

Everyone seemed to sag in relief at that, as though by Nico's indication they could stop, could sink onto their haunches and groan in sighs of Relief. As Will watched, Nico turned towards his friends, towards Will, and visibly drew his eyes across them all. Will thought it almost looked like he was conducting a head count and maybe he was because when he'd spared a glance for them all he closed his eyes briefly with a faint sigh of relief. "Gods, I'm glad that's over," he muttered, and to Will it sounded more like he was speaking to himself than to anyone else.

"Not quite," Jason said from where he'd sprawled awkwardly upon the ground, arm held tightly and with evident pain to his chest. Gazes snapped towards him then followed the direction of his nod. "Is that – is that –?"

"The sphinx," Annabeth said, confirming the foreboding speculation rising in Will's mind as he too drew his gaze towards where Jason indicated. "I'm surprised it's taken her so long to get here, actually. We must have been deeper in the castle that I thought we were when we confronted her."

Will spared a wide-eyed glance towards Annabeth, then back towards the sphinx loping in long strides down the hill with wings half spread as though threatening to launch herself into the air in flight. He thought he could perceive figures on her back, what looked like four girls, but he couldn't be sure. Will couldn't even made a speculation himself for the questions elicited by Annabeth's offhanded and faintly exhausted statement. The sphinx? In the castle? They'd confronted her? _Who_ had confronted her? When? How? What happened? _How did Will not know about this?_

But whatever questions may have spilled from his lips, whatever questions any of them may have voiced, were silenced by Nico's words. "We need to go," he said, voice grim. A frown had settled darkly upon his face by the time Will glanced back towards him. "Now. We can't fight her and the Hesperides both, not in the condition we're in."

"The Hesperides too?" Thalia said with rising affront in her voice. "What are they -?"

"Thalia, not now," Annabeth cut her off. Then she turned back to Nico, as though awaiting his words. "Whenever you're ready."

Will was rising fully to his feet in an instant, Hazel handed over to a waiting Frank who in turn hoisted her easily into his arms. Nico approached him at a brisk step that was nearly a run alongside the rest of their friends, a wary glance cast over his shoulder at the rapidly approaching sphinx. In spite of himself, in spite of their danger, Will couldn't help but ask. "Are you sure you're okay to take everyone?"

Nico spared him a glance. A glance that briefly – only briefly – faded from concern, from anger, from determination, into exasperation touched just faintly with fondness. "Of course."


	15. Chapter 15 - Dreaming

A/N: Hi everyone! Just a couple of announcements that aren't really important but I'm gonna mention anyways. Firstly: yay, I posted early! I feel so unnecessarily proud of myself. And secondly: this is a double update this week, so be sure to read the next chapter too! They're relatively short ones, I'm afraid, so I hope there being two makes up for it :)

Just for anyone who cares to know, this double update is in part because I've worked out that in doing so, provided I'm still able to update every week, this story will be finished by the end of the year. That's right. Then end. Over six months of weekly updates and this series will be finished! I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing (it's kind of depressing when I think about it), but I just wanted to give a heads up of the time period for those interested.

But anyways, hope you enjoy the chapter(s). Please leave a review if you like it or have anything to comment!

* * *

 **Chapter 15: Dreaming**

Nico had exactly three seconds after arriving back at the cabin in Silverwater before he passed out. Three seconds to release his grasp of Will and Annabeth simultaneously, to glance down at his fingers and notice their darkness that tended more towards the shadows of fingers than solid digits themselves. A bare moment he had to notice that he appeared to have not ten but about double that number of shadow-like appendages.

The thought _Will's going to kill me_ flashed briefly across his thoughts. Then he collapsed. He was out before his knees even hit the ground.

When he came to, it took Nico barely a moment to realise that he wasn't actually awakening. A moment to realise the familiarity of a dream, to acknowledge that he hadn't suddenly been transported from the simple national park-side cabin to his father's Underworld palace. The continued ghostliness of his fingers was a bit of a giveaway. That or something was very, very wrong. Nico hoped it wasn't the latter. He sincerely hoped that he wasn't really dead – at least not yet. Couldn't he just hold out for a couple more months?

Nico was exhausted. Even in the dream, he felt physically wearied, as he generally was, but with the added strain of killing one of the Children settling upon him. He wasn't quite trembling yet and his motor functions were still normal which was a plus, but… he so tired. He took a deep breath to steady himself, closing his eyes briefly before opening them once more.

Turning in a circle, Nico drew his gaze across the shimmering, light-sucking obsidian walls of his father's residence, the black marble floors and intermittently spaced skeletons lining spaced between sconced torches. It was vast and open, sprawling with great, cylindrical pillars that seemed to grow like tree trunks from the floors and the immense skull throne raised upon a dais at the far end of the room. There was barely a touch of decoration, not a portrait hanging from a wall nor a vase of flowers in sight. Nothing but thick, black curtains that Nico could only assume covered windows looking out onto the outdoors, or perhaps another room. Maybe into Persephone's garden, Nico wasn't sure. He'd never sought to look.

Yet for all of its Spartan outfitting, there was a sense of wealth, of grandeur, about the black, open room that, in some ways, Nico preferred to Mount Olympus with its bright gaudiness. The darkness was comfortable, shadowing, concealing of that which it was best to ignore. Besides, for all of the appalling décor that Hades' cabin _still_ wore at Camp Half-Blood, Hades himself had taste. Just slight, subtle touches of wealth here and there – the diamond – not crystal but _diamond_ wall sconces – the dark, bejewelled mosaic on the roof that was actually made of some of the most perfect gemstones that had ever existed, the faint touch of gold trickling like fingers of a lava stream through the marble floors. It would be enough to intimidate a wealthy someone who knew to look in the right places.

Will had been one such intimidated person. In the past Nico had often forgotten that he came from a wealthy family himself until such realities presented themselves. It was sort of amusing and Nico had made a point of inviting Will to the Underworld as often as he could simply for kicks. And to hear the more and more irrelevant and desperate excuses _not_ to come, which were always aplenty. Will might have been one to preach that the land of the undead and its resident Ghost King didn't scare him but… Hades and his palace was apparently a different matter.

"You're dreaming," a voice said from behind him, effectively alleviating any lingering suspicions Nico might have possessed for the notion. Not that he'd had any. Not really.

Turning once more towards the direction he had previously been facing, the floor that had held no one but seconds before, Nico faced Hades. He too would intimidate any wealthy man with nothing but a blank stare and the weight of his tailored suit. He was tall, imposing, attaining a height and breadth that Nico himself had never managed. His dark, shoulder length hair and bearded face contrasted starkly with skin so pale that Nico would have questioned his paternity had it not been the fact that they shared numerous, more noticeable characteristics.

Like raising the dead. Somehow Nico doubted that such a trait was inherited from his mother.

Tucking his hands into his pockets, Nico adopted an impression of ease that he never felt in the palace. "Father."

Hades dipped his head in a nod of recognition. His eyes, staring unblinkingly and expressionlessly, were black and deep, though as always touched by the faintest light of unpitying purple fire. In all the years that Nico had known him, that had never changed, had never eased, regardless of how well they came to know one another. Which was to say, not very well. As it never would be.

Hades regarded him for a long moment before speaking. "You have pushed yourself too far again."

"I'm not dead, am I?" Nico asked, just to be sure.

"No. You are not dead. Yet."

"Then it's fine. It doesn't matter."

Hades' eyes flickered briefly with a more noticeable purple but otherwise his expression didn't change. "It does matter. I regret the strain the use of your sword puts upon you but more than that… if you die before your time, before you have completed your mission, then any of my possible future descendants will forever be at risk."

Nico bit back the urge to sigh. To grumble that it shouldn't concern _Nico_ that any of Hades' future children would be threatened by Echidna. That it shouldn't be _Nico's_ duty to erase the monsters that would pose that threat. That if it concerned Hades so much then why didn't he do it?

He didn't ask. He didn't speak any of his thoughts. Not because he didn't feel them wholeheartedly but because he'd asked before. Because he knew the answers already.

It was his duty as a son of Hades to vanquish the threat posed to his family, present and future. It was his desperate need to do so, to protect himself from the dangers of the monsters. It was his sorest desire to protect not only Hazel but his friends that could be targeted by those monsters.

And it was only he that could do it.

He and Hazel. Only them. Because other than they and Hades himself, no one could wield a weapon that could ultimately vanquish the danger posed to him once and for all. And Hades… Hades was a god. He couldn't take part in such climatic and world-altering acts. Not like Apollo had when he'd been cast to earth as a mortal because he'd been _mortal,_ if only temporarily _._ Hades was a God, and as part of his unspoken contract, as part of his vast power and capacity, he couldn't wreak such changes on the world. Not such irreversible changes – like _permanently_ utterly destroying monsters that had existed for millennia. The thought made Nico sick, repulsed by the very idea of what he was doing, and he was only a demigod. The fact that Hades himself had forged the Stygian knives for him, had managed to imbue the powers of the Styx into a spatha for Hazel, was more than Nico would have thought possible. At least it was when he understood, anyway.

Hades might seem cruel at times. He might seem hard-hearted, embittered by his circumstances and his ostracism from the rest of the gods – that much hadn't changed, not even after Percy's request years before. Nico doubted it ever would, and Hades only seemed coldly resigned to it. But hateful? Neglectful? Nonchalant even?

Hades was many things but he wasn't that. Not to his children. Nico remembered his mother's words, how she always used to say that his father had a 'softer side that so few knew' and that he was 'generous'. Nico hadn't believed it for a long time, had assumed his mother to be misguided. She hadn't been. Not really. It simply took a lot of digging through the hardness, the bluntness, the often tactless manner Hades approached everything. While he wouldn't admit it, while he probably didn't even recognise it himself, Nico thought that he might just care for his children. At least a little bit. He merely expressed such care strangely, like informing them they were on the verge of death with less emotion than a normal person would comment on the weather.

Bowing his head in a nod, Nico raised his eyes to meet Hades' once more. "I know the risks and I know what will happen if I fail. But I didn't have a choice."

The slight furrow in Hades' brow couldn't quite be called a frown. "You acted in order to protect your friends."

"Yes."

"That is dangerous."

"Yes."

"They are a liability."

Nico shrugged, not allowing himself to be triggered by the bluntness of his father's words. "Maybe. But they're also a benefit."

The almost-frown deepened slightly. "A benefit? How so? You have on numerous occasions been required to act in ways that jeopardise your own safety and your mission because of the presence of those around you."

Nico nodded once more. It felt strange that his stance would be on in defending the support of his friends when he had been so opposed to their assistance barely a month ago. That it would be _Nico_ that was attempting to convince someone else that they were, in fact, an advantage in his mission rather than a 'liability'. Oftentimes Nico found himself staring at Will, or at Percy or Annabeth, Reyna or Jason or any of his friends and wondering how he could possibly let himself behave as he did. How he could even consider putting those he cared for at risk at times struck him like a blow to the face.

But then he would remember the fight against the Colchian Dragon. Nico would recall what Hazel had said of Scylla, and how there was no way that she would have been able to survive the fight if not for their friends. And most recently, Nico knew the memory of the confrontation with the sphinx – even if it had not ended as favourably as he would have liked – and then against Ladon…

Ladon. They'd defeated Ladon. And so fast, so effectively, that Nico had to mentally shake his head and remind himself that he had in fact been defeated. Their communal efforts, their combined strength, had vanquished the monster with almost no effort at all.

 _No,_ Nico corrected himself. _It had been with effort. Hazel was injured, and I saw Jason take a blow, and Annabeth looked like she was bleeding from her head and…_ He didn't know the status of the rest of his friends but was certain that there would be injuries he wasn't aware of. Hopefully Will had tended to them by now.

Will… Hopefully Will was alright. Gods, let Will be alright.

Shaking himself from his thoughts, resolving to get their confrontation over with, Nico turned his attention back to Hades. "Why did you call me down here?"

Hades' tilted his head slightly in a way that was far too reminiscent of the sphinx for Nico's tastes. "Can I not see my son when I desire?"

Nico fought the urge to roll his eyes. He and his father weren't close. They never would be, that he was certain of. Both shared their general dislike of people in general far too much for that. Nico had spent more time in the Underworld over the past three years than even he would have liked, and he had reached one conclusion at least: that he and Hades would never have a perfect 'father-son' relationship. At times it seemed that they barely had a relationship at all.

Although, Hades did occasionally offer assistance and support where he could. Nico suspected that offer was likely the reason he was there at all. "I have a hunch that it's not from any 'desire to see me' that you called me down here."

Hades' eyebrow twitched infinitesimally. "Then perhaps I merely wish to caution you on your excessive and potentially dangerous use of shadows."

Nico shook his head. "I think I'm old enough to take care of myself in that matter, and to know when it's necessary for me to push myself. Not to mention that you've already cautioned me countless times before."

"Clearly to little effect," Hades murmured.

Shrugging, Nico hunched his shoulders slightly. "It was necessary this time." Then he affixed Hades with a flat stare. "What did you want to tell me?"

Hades stared right back at him with his dark, bottomless eyes once more. He was expressionless, not even a frown remaining. When he spoke, he sounded resigned, almost regretful. "I have felt stirrings once more."

In an instant, Nico felt his gut tighten, the disgruntled objection that always arose when facing his father thrust aside. "Stirrings? From Tartarus?"

"Yes," Hades said with a slight inclination of his head. "I do not believe it a stretch to consider it is Echidna who has set the waters to rippling. It has the feeling of her."

Nico felt his jaw clench unconsciously at Hades' words. Echidna was stirring again. It wouldn't be the first time she had done so, but it was the first time in a while. Hades had interrupted Nico's dreams on several occasions to tell him just that, almost always following the defeat of one of Echidna's children. Even her grandchildren, the hellhounds, sometimes provoked some activity from her. It really wasn't all that unusual but… "Is it unusual?"

The inclination of Hades' head was anything but reassuring. "I have felt such a rise only once before, and we both know when that was."

Nico dropped his gaze to the floor. Yes, he did know. The first time Echidna had risen in years was when she had fully heaved herself from Tartarus with malicious intent and first given her compulsive order to her children. That order had hounded Nico ever since. He fought the urge to shiver, instead affixing a glare upon his feet. "You think she's set to climb out again?"

"It would not surprise me," Hades replied. "Not in the slightest. She can feel when her children die just as surely as I could mine."

"Maybe not just as surely," Nico muttered distractedly. "You happen to be the Lord of the Underworld, in case you've forgotten."

Hades gave a huff of humourless laughter. "I have not forgotten."

Closing his eyes briefly, Nico took a deep, steadying breath. Then he raised his gaze to his father's. "You think she'll come for me? Me and Hazel?"

Hades nodded slowly. "I believe it is inevitable. Even if you succeeded in destroying all of the Children and permanently free yourselves of them, I believe she would come for you. For all of you."

Nico stared for a long moment as understanding settled upon him. That tightening in his gut was almost painful this time. "You mean my friends, too."

"I mean you and your friends, yes. If the sphinx has not already sent word to her mother of your support then she will soon."

Nico flinched at the thought. "I knew I shouldn't have just left the sphinx alive."

"I doubt you had much of a choice," Hades said with more compassion than he did for just about anything. Which was to say that it was barely discernible. "From what I can glean, you nearly killed yourself in your escape. I doubt that any of your would have been capable enough of facing a second of Echidna's children, even if the sphinx does lack offspring of her own to offer their aid."

"She has the Hesperides, though," Nico muttered, more to himself than to Hades. "And I can't imagine they'll be particularly happy that we killed Ladon. They seemed to have taken a great liking to him. And support. They seemed set on killing me just because Ladon was trying to himself."

Hades nodded sagely. "Driven by the second-hand effects of Echidna's compulsive order, no doubt. It would be impossible for them to live and guard alongside Ladon for so long without becoming touched by that which plagued him."

"That's what I thought," Nico said. "And now the Hesperides are with the sphinx."

"I assume that will not deter you from your goal," Hades said, the hint of compassion faded entirely from his voice once more. His eyes flickered slightly, the beginnings of the purple flame just discernible. "I assume that you would not put the lives of the nymphs of Hesperides above the importance of your mission.

Nico shook his head, if a little regretfully. He didn't think the nymphs were more important, but he didn't particularly want to kill them either. He didn't want to kill any of the monsters, really. Not permanently. But that wasn't what Hades wanted to hear. "Of course not. I was just saying."

"You will have to seek the sphinx with all due haste."

"I know. The Caucasian Eagle too." Nico fought the urge to shift uneasily under the daunting missions before him. He didn't even know how long he had before it would be too late. "Before Echidna arises."

"It could be any day from now," Hades murmured.

"That's not exactly reassuring."

"Were you looking for reassurance?"

"I guess not."

"Good. Because if you were you would be seeking it in the wrong place."

Nico turned a narrow-eyed stare upon his father. God though he may be, Hades didn't really intimidate him anymore. How could he, when he made social blunders like that? If Nico was indeed socially inept as Will often called him, then it was certainly clear where his ineptitude had genetically come from. Hades' comment didn't even possess a hint of sarcasm amidst its tactlessness. He was being entirely sincere in his words. "Right. Good to know where the dead ends are."

Hades stared at him long and silently for a moment before he slowly nodded. "Good," he echoed. "Then you may go. Ensure that you hasten to your mission with all possible speed."

Slipping his hands from his pockets, Nico turned his attention momentarily to his fingers as the ghostly shadows began to fade to deeper darkeness once more. "Like I'd put it off."

"I merely say as much for concern that you might delay your actions for the sake of your friends. Or for Will Solace in particular, perhaps."

Nico raised his gaze towards Hades even as his vision began to darken with the fading room. "What about Will?"

Hades shook his head. He had always had a strange degree of approval for Will, unexpected and unseen by Will himself. Nico was faintly discomforted by the slight reprimand in his tone, as though he was disapproving. It was unprecedented. "I believe that Will Solace may impress upon you the need to delay your searching further."

Nico stared for a moment before snorting. He ignored the flash of purple fire and the cold affront that briefly surfaced in Hades' eyes as he did so to shake his head. "'Will Solace' can impress all he likes. It's not going to change anything. Not about this."

"His opinion has in the past," Hades pointed out, his voice soft in what Nico recognised as being the faintest touch of anger as it grew into echoes with his Nico's fading.

Nico ignored that, too, shaking his head more resolutely. He shunted aside his retreat briefly; he wouldn't leave this conversation unsaid. "Yeah, it has. But not this time." He felt himself become sombre once more, the smirk fading from his lips. "I've decided. This time I've wholeheartedly decided. I need to vanquish the monsters before they can hurt everyone I care about. That's more important than protecting myself is."

Regarding him silently for a moment, Nico saw that Hades heard something from his words that perhaps he hadn't even intended to put there. Slowly he nodded his head. "Yes, I can sense your resolve."

"I might have been swayed before, but I know in this instance I can't be. I can't.

Hades nodded once more. "Yes, I can see that indeed." Then he sighed, and there was a touch of regret in the sound that Nico was faintly surprised to hear. "It has always been a weakness of yours, Nico. You firm your resolve and it takes the weight of the world to shake you from it, even if it is driven by blindness. I believe it is your determination and inability to be turned from your decision that will ultimately be your demise when it comes."

Nico raised an eyebrow, staring at his father for a moment before snorting once more. Letting go of his effort to remain in the palace, he let himself slide. In barely seconds, Nico couldn't see much of the room at all. Nothing but his father's pale face and dark eyes as he retreated from the throne room. "Gee, thanks for the support, Father. Your sympathy and encouragement is rousing."

"I merely speak the truth as I know it."

"Yeah, well, maybe you'd do better to tamper that down just a little bit," Nico suggested. And that was all. He caught a glimpse of his father's faintly affronted expression before even that faded into –

 _Dark._

 _Darkness and cold._

 _Darkness and coldness and foreboding._

 _It was familiar to him, experienced so many times before. How could he not recognise the prison of chilling blackness, of pressing emptiness and abandonment? He wrapped his arms around himself, tucking his knees to his chest, but it did little to deter the cold._

 _He hated the cold. It was why he forced himself not to feel it. He hated the cold._

 _He hated the darkness too. Hated it when even his night vision was torn from him to leave him in blind confusion. It wasn't right, felt so_ wrong _._

 _And he hated the loneliness. He was good at being alone, but he hated it. He told everyone he didn't care but… he_ hated _that possibly most of all._

 _Squeezing his eyes shut, he wrapped his arms around himself more tightly. Anything to drive away the shivers. Not that it worked. The cold of his surrounds, the stagnant air reminiscent of the hollowed-out centre of an iceberg, couldn't be ignored. And the weighty silence –_

 _No, not silence. It was never completely silent. He knew that. He was alone, but he was not Alone. If he strained his ears hard enough… he didn't want to but he couldn't help himself. If he strained them…_

 _A sound. No, not just a sound. A voice. A growl. A wail. A whisper just within hearing._

 _The darkness shifted, changed, morphed, and he was on his feet. He was running sightlessly, unable to fathom how fast he moved let alone in which direction he ran. Fear rose thickly within him, choking him. He didn't know when it had arisen but it was suddenly there, just as he was suddenly running._

 _Running. Fleeing._

 _The sounds of pounding, scratching, scraping footsteps behind him urged him to struggle faster, to claw through the cold darkness, to escape, but those steps only grew closer…_

 _Closer…_

 _Closer…_

 _Then were the faces. They arose as they always did. Faces in passing, barely discernible. A monster with a square jaw and protruding fangs in a shadowed face. A ghostly wraith with mouth opened in a scream that reached his ears only when the face disappeared. Monsters and men, creatures and women, children, babies, grandparents and…_

 _None of them were familiar, but they were all terrifying. He didn't know why, didn't know why_ exactly, _but they dragged from him such a fear that he almost couldn't breathe. He ran faster, thought he ran faster, and the faces followed him with ease. Just as the footsteps pounding after him drew closer… closer… closer…_

 _"Where do you go?"_

 _"Why are you running?"_

 _"Stay with us… come, stay…"_

 _"Take me with you… don't leave!"_

 _The voices, the whispers, the wails. They became words that stabbed at his ears. Hands reached for him that he barely dodged. Fingers grabbed as jaws snapped, chewing at the invisible shadows of his passing. He felt the touch of a chilling caress on his cheek that he batted away with his hand. He felt skeletal claws grasp his ankle that he wrenched free from in a flurry of kicks._

 _A touch, a passing stroke, a demanding, clutching grab – he flinched from them all, terror rising within his throat to choke him from breathing, threatening to burst a cry from his lips. Face, fingers, monsters, chasing…_

 _A hand grabbed his shoulder, shaking not hard but demanding and he spun with arm raised mid-step to strike –_

"Whoa, take it easy. You're okay."

Nico's eyes snapped open as he drew in a sharp, gasping breath. A breath that became two, then a series of choking pants and stuttered gasps. He blinked away the last of the cloying darkness, squeezing his eyes briefly closed until the last vestiges of the nightmare faded away. He could feel trembles shaking his body, could feel the cold chill of sweat as his body dropped its heat and the temperature of his skin with it.

A nightmare. It was just a nightmare. Only just… but entirely enough to be terrifying.

The darkness of his mind, of his _memories_ , fully faded to be replaced with a different darkness entirely. A warmer dark of familiar shadows, and the glow of a constant, unwavering light reflecting off the ceiling of what Nico recognised as being his room. Blinking slowly, he drew his gaze down towards the source of the light.

Towards Will.

Nico was lying in his own bed, twisted beneath the mess of his sheets and blankets, and Will was seated on the edge of his mattress. His left hand glowed with the light of Apollo, a golden radiance that wasn't as abusive as it perhaps should have been to Nico considering his fondness for the shadows it chased away. His face was gentle, though a slight frown of concern touched his brow. Not his Wrong Frown, but a frown nonetheless. His blond hair and the darker gold of his skin was illuminated by the glow in a way that Nico knew as being the driving force for his fond regard of that light.

Nico would always want to see Will, his countenance fully visible in the light that was _him_. Always, even if it chased away the comfortable shadows. He hadn't realised in the past how prevalent that desire was, but always, always… he would always want…

Shaking himself from the pathetic sappiness of his thoughts – Nico blamed the fact that he was unhinged by the nightmare as he always was – and turned his attention towards his upraised hand captured in Will's. He raised an eyebrow. "Tell me you haven't just been sitting there holding my hand the whole time I've been asleep?" He said, his voice coming out a croak. He wasn't sure how long he'd been out for, but given that he'd passed out before the nightmare had assaulted him and had an entire conversation with his father, it couldn't have been a short period. Time was different in dreams but still took its quota.

The small frown faded from Will's face to be replaced by an equally small smile. "Would it bother you if I had?"

"It's kind of creepy."

"I don't think it's creepy."

"That's because _you're_ creepy."

Will's smile widened. "Much obliged by your compliment. But if it makes you feel any better, no, I haven't been. Only for the last minute or so."

"It wasn't a compliment," Nico muttered, uttering a faint cough to clear the hoarseness from his throat. With a struggle he attempted to sit up, only to have Will easily push him back down again with a shove to the shoulder. "Hey, don't –"

"You've been asleep for nearly two days."

Nico blinked. "Seriously? Two whole days?"

"Seriously." Will's smile faded to be replaced by a reprovingly quirked eyebrow.

Nico sighed, dropping his head back to his pillow and shifted his eyes to the ceiling overhead. He knew that expression only too well and what was coming after it. "Let me hear it, then."

"What?"

"Just get it all out of your system. You'll feel better afterwards."

Will was silent for a moment before replying. When he did, it wasn't with the scolding tone that Nico had anticipated but instead almost melancholic. "I'm not going to tell you off or anything, you know."

Nico dropped his gaze back towards Will. He fiddled with Nico's fingers, doing nothing more than touching them as though wondering over the fact that they were even there. Nico frowned. "That's unusual for you."

Will shook his head, and though he attempted another smile Nico felt it failed quite dismally. He glanced towards him, regret swimming in his eyes. "I'm not going to tell you that you shouldn't have shadow-travelled Nico. I wouldn't do that –"

"That's a first."

"- because I know it was necessary." Will heaved a heavy sigh, dropping his eyes back to Nico's fingers as he squeezed his hand once more. "I don't like it, but then I don't have to. I hate it when you shadow-travel at all because of how it exhausts you –"

"It doesn't exhaust me."

"- but I can't stop you from doing it." Will continued once more as though he hadn't even heard Nico's interruption. "And in this instance, we likely would have come out a lot worse off than we would have if you hadn't taken us out of there. The sphinx… we wouldn't have been able to face her, her and the Hesperides. Not straight after Ladon."

Nico was silent for a moment, watching as Will ran his thumb over his knuckles in gentle, soothing motions. Nico didn't like being touched on general principle, but Will was an exceptional case. He always had been. "Everyone's alright, though, aren't they? No one's… no one was too badly hurt? And Hazel, was she –"

"She's fine." Will nodded, flashing Nico another small smile. It was more genuine this time. "She's fine now."

"And everyone else?"

Nico saw the abrupt change in Will at his question. It was his switch to 'doctor' mode, as Nico tended to think of it. It was likely only a brief arousal of that state, but Nico felt an old fondness for its arrival nonetheless. When Will spoke it was in a faintly lecturing tone, objective and just a little detached as though he was relaying intelligence rather than quoting the conditions of their friends.

"Hazel's back on her feet now – she woke up earlier this afternoon – but my suspicion is that she'll always have scars around her torso and right leg. She's bouncing back quickly, though. Jason broke his arm in three places and two of his ribs were fractured. I think he was more embarrassed that he was thrown from the sky more than anything, though, and his arm will be mobile again in a couple of days.

"Annabeth sustained a head injury that left her dizzy for all of twelve hours. The worst part about that was her incessant worrying for whether it would affect her brain functioning. It hasn't, of course, but it's part of the reason I thought it best to leave her at the cabin and take you to your flat." Will gave a small detached smile before continuing. "Piper sprained her ankle in what was strangely enough exactly the same degree as Reyna, Kayla damaged all of the fingers on her bow hand when her second to last shot misfired and the hydra arrow rebounded upon her skin and Thalia had some pretty impressive bruises on her back. Percy and Frank…" Will shrugged. "Other than the bumps, bruises and scrapes that everyone got, they're both largely fine. Except for exhaustion on Frank's part, that is; shapeshifting really takes it out of him."

"And you?" Nico asked, hoping to catch the 'doctor mode' before it faded into the downplaying that Will would likely assume at the query. He always instinctively sheltered Nico like that.

He didn't quite make it in time. Will paused, blinking at Nico silently for a moment before smiling with the faintest uplifting of his lips. "I'm fine."

"Will –"

"Seriously, Nico. I'm absolutely fine." He shook his head, a little self-deprecatingly. "I was probably the least injured out of everyone."

"Good," Nico said with a sharp nod of his head as he gave Will's hand a squeeze as hard as he could. He hoped it was just a little painful. "And don't you dare think otherwise, you idiot. It's not a bad thing that you weren't injured."

"I wasn't going to –"

"If anything, it's probably the best thing that could have happened, that you weren't, so you could look after everyone else."

"I don't think –"

"So don't even consider blaming yourself for not being injured. Because of all the Light Bulb moments you've had, I'm pretty sure that one would take the cake."

Will started at him, mouth open as if to reply for a moment before he snapped it shut. His eyes softened, though, and when he shook his head it was with a very definite touch of affection. "I guess I can't argue with that."

"No, you can't," Nico said. "And you shouldn't."

They fell into silence once more, Will resuming his stroking across Nico's knuckles. Nico watched him, blinking the recurring blurriness from his eyes that arose for the vibrancy of Will's glowing free hand. The rest of the room was dark, and it was possibly night, but that light was like a small sun in itself. Nico found that, surprisingly, he didn't mind that sun so much. He didn't even mind that it so decidedly drove the shadows away.

Finally, Will spoke. "You weren't too good yourself."

Nico stared at Will until Will's gaze drew upwards to meet his own. He shrugged with deliberate nonchalance. "I'm just tired more than anything, I think."

"'Tired' might be a bit of an understatement," Will murmured.

"Maybe," Nico allowed. "But I'm finding that two days sleeping is working wonders." Which, surprisingly, it was. For all that he'd been wrenched awake by a nightmare, Nico felt better. More awake then he had been for a while. It made him wonder… "Did you do something to me? Make me better?"

Will shrugged noncommittally, which was as good a reply as any. "You were hardly sleeping. Unconsciousness isn't exactly a substitute for sleep."

"It's about as good as I've had in a while."

"Yeah. That." Will's hand tightened on Nico's fingers briefly as he frowned down at them before he lifted his gaze to meet Nico's stare. "I'm sorry."

Nico blinked, feeling his own brow wrinkle with a frown. "About what?"

"Your nightmares."

"Um… I'm pretty sure you're not a key player in them, Will. They're hardly your fault."

Will shrugged, the gesture vaguely disconsolate. "I'm sorry that I didn't know how bad they still were. I knew you weren't sleeping all that much, but when you told me it was insomnia… I haven't seen you wake up from any, but I assume now that's mostly because I just haven't really seen you sleep at all. You always seem to be awake already when I wake up." He shook his head. "I don't know, in some ways it would have been better if it was a primary sleep disorder, or even secondary insomnia. At least then I might be able to do something about it."

"You can't do anything about nightmares, Will," Nico said quietly. In all the time they'd known one another, Nico and Will had never spoken about them except to acknowledge that they existed. Nico didn't want to, not with anyone. To do so would somehow make them more real. He didn't want to make them any more real than they already were. "They're nightmares."

"I know," Will muttered, though he sounded far from convinced, sorrowful at the prospect. "I just wish…" He trailed off and went back to stroking Nico's hand. It was in a soothing gesture once more, even if the touch was barely more than hesitant.

After a long pause in which Nico fidgeted in an effort to untangle himself from the cocooning confines of his sheets, Will spoke once more. There was, surprisingly, a faint smile in his tone. "You know, this kind of reminds me of the first time we actually slept together."

Nico raised an eyebrow and couldn't help but smirk. "How the hell did you get reminded of that in this situation?"

Will glanced up at him in confusion for a moment before his smile widened across his face. He rolled his eyes. "Not sex, you idiot. I meant when I slept over at your cabin for the first time."

"Oh, right." Nico nodded his understanding but couldn't shake his smirk. Will had asked for it with his choice of words. Yet even so, the solemn memory of the first time Will had saved him from a nightmare rose to the forefront of his mind. "Yeah, I remember."

"You tried to punch me that time, too."

"Too?"

Will jiggled Nico's captured hand pointedly, lopsided smile still affixed. "It's why we're in such a lovey-dovey, intimate handhold as we are now. It was that or suffer a bloody nose."

"Oh." Nico murmured, a little sheepishly. "Oops."

"I distinctly hear the absence of your apology."

"Well, you were the one who chose to sit close enough for me to nearly whack you one. Was it you who grabbed my shoulder."

"I did," Will nodded, smiling. "And with no regrets, mind. I'd rather risk it and wake you up for it."

Shaking his head, Nico rolled his eyes. Then, reaching up with his free hand he tugged on Will's shoulder until he took the hint and lowered himself awkwardly into a recline on the mattress beside Nico. It was a tight fit, the single bed protesting slightly beneath the weight of two people, but Nico didn't really care. Not when he reached for Will to wrap his arms around his waist anyway, or when Will returned the embrace. Not when they shifted so that they were face to face, nose to nose, and Nico could lean into Will to press his lips upon his. It was an apology of sorts, the kind that Will had noted the absence of and Nico silently offered.

He was glad for the privacy of the bedroom. Nico didn't know why Will had decided it was better for the both of them to secrete themselves in the flat, except for perhaps to escape the nagging interruptions of their friends. But they were alone, his ears told him, and Nico was thankful of that fact. For once, he was able to lie in his bed without the distraction of the pictures, the maps, the weapons mounted on the walls around the room, drawing his attention.

Will was a pretty good distraction for that, his body warm beneath Nico as he rolled on top of him in a way that made the bed groan. Nico found he didn't care much for the disgruntlement of his bed. Just as he didn't really have much objection to the touching, the holding, the kissing, as any other contact might have provoked from him. Because it was with Will.

Will had always been the exception.


	16. Chapter 16 - Warning

**Chapter 16: Warning**

It had been night when Nico had woken the first time, so Will wasn't all that surprised that, when he pulled himself from sleep, it was into daylight. Barely perceivable morning daylight given that Nico's bedroom was constantly wreathed in shadows and the darkness of curtained windows, but Will always knew when the sun rose.

It was just light enough for him to see by, to see Nico by, as he rolled in the narrow bed towards him. Nico was already awake and watching him back, only half wrapped in the blankets so that his bare shoulders, pale in the relative darkness, were starkly visible. He didn't appear cold, though; Will knew that he didn't let himself feel the cold most of the time. He didn't think it was healthy to ignore it as he did but he wouldn't object. Not yet, anyway.

Stretching his arms overhead with a groan, Will reached towards him with a heavy exhalation. Nico didn't draw away from him, which Will had almost come to expect as normal again but was happy for nonetheless. "Morning."

"Mm," Nico hummed in a reply. His eyes were half-closed, though Will sincerely doubted that he was on the verge of slipping back into sleep once more. He still looked tired, but Will had grown to expect him to appear so. Maybe less tired than usual, but that might have been Will's hope rather than reality. He seemed exceptionally pale, too. He was always pale of late, no matter what Will tried to do to correct the abnormality that had become the norm. But now Nico seemed even more so, almost washed out. Will hoped it was just the poor lighting.

"Did you sleep again at all?" He asked, already anticipating the answer.

Predictably, Nico shook his head slightly. "No."

"So what, just lying there watching me sleep?" Will let himself smile, despite the sadness he felt over the issue of Nico's sleeplessness that surfaced once more. "And you say that I'm the creepy one?"

"Would you rather I turn over and face the wall than look at you?"

"Of course not."

"Then don't complain."

"I'm not complaining," Will said, sliding across the short distance between them until their foreheads were nearly touching one another's on the pillow. "Maybe I like creepy."

"Taken out of context that would sound really disturbing," Nico muttered. "Actually, in context it sounds pretty disturbing too."

Will only smiled, reaching forwards to press their lips together. It wasn't exactly warm in the room, unheated against winter as it was, but Will was comfortable. He would always be comfortable with Nico. He was comforted just by Nico's presence and the confirmation of his existence, of contact between skin and skin. It was the most calming thing he could possibly experience. Will lost himself momentarily in the feel of Nico's lips against his own, of the hand that reached across his waist to hold him close, the soft warmth of breath on his cheek when Nico turned his head at Will's unspoken request to kiss his cheek, along his jaw, down his neck.

This. This was a side of Nico that no one else knew. A side that Will didn't want anyone else to know because it was _his_. The gentle, pliable, unspoken affection that expressed itself in soft touches, unshakeable holds and the absence of resistance to contact at all. Nico didn't like being touched – he never had – but in such circumstances, just with Will, he let those walls down. It made Will feel like he was holding something sacred, something utterly unique. Something precious.

Which he was. Nico truly was. Will didn't need to overthink everything, to contemplate and compare, to become aware of that. He knew that Nico was special, and not just to him. He knew it innately, like he knew which direction the sun rose and set.

Some time later, slumped into lazy stillness with Will resting his head upon Nico's neck, Nico broke the silence. "I think I might go over to the cabin and see everyone."

Will nodded into the boniness of his collarbone. "I had a suspicion you might want to."

"Just to make sure everyone's okay."

"What, you don't trust my assessment?"

"And to see who's up and ready."

"You're not listening to what I'm saying at all, are you?" Will asked with a small smile. A smile which faded as he fully considered Nico's words. He tilted his gaze up towards where Nico pondered the ceiling with a slight frown. "Ready? As in ready to head out of a scout?"

"Mm," Nico hummed quietly.

Will swallowed tightly. "Nico, I don't think you should be going out just yet."

Nico glanced towards him, head dipping just slightly. "I'm fine now, Will."

"No you're not. You were out like a light for a full two days. I think that's the longest I've ever seen you passed out for after a shadow travel."

"Yeah, probably. But I'm fine now." And as if to prove it, Nico sat up, shrugging Will from his shoulder not cruelly but deliberately. He turned his attention down towards Will with a stare made unreadable either by the darkness or the closed-off blankness of his expression. Will wasn't sure which. "I can't really afford to spend any more time lying around."

" _We_ ," Will corrected, because he hated when Nico presumed he was by himself. " _We_ can't afford it. But we will. Just for a bit."

"Will –"

"Two days, Nico. It's only been two days since Ladon was defeated. You're allowed to take a break."

Nico shook his head, frown deepening. Will was given the impression it was more self-directed than towards him, however. "No I can't."

" _We_ can't. And yes, actually, we can."

"No I can't."

"Nico –"

"Will." It was Nico's turn to cut him off this time. Quietly yet sharply, in a way that immediately silenced Will's objections despite their persistence. "You don't understand. We have to act as fast as possible."

"So you always say," Will said, turning his head upon the pillow to peer up at Nico more fully. "But you're allowed a brief respite, surely. Just to recover. Annabeth hasn't found any whisper of movement from the sphinx, and we haven't heard anything of the Caucasian eagle for weeks now, so why do we –?"

"Echidna is stirring."

Will was silenced. He stared up at Nico, only now perceiving the concern, the fear, beneath the blankness of his expression. Slowly, he pushed up to sitting beside Nico to meet his gaze eye for eye. "What?"

"Echidna," Nico repeated. "She's stirring in Tartarus again. Last time she did that she made a break for the mortal world. That was how she set her compulsive orders upon her children. And this time – she's angry."

Will was muted for a long pause, dread rapidly descending upon him. He had to swallow thickly before speaking. "How do you know that?"

Nico pursed his lips slightly. "I spoke to my father."

"Hades?"

"He's the only one I've got as far as I'm aware," Nico said with a touch of sarcasm to his words. It faded an instant later, however, as he continued. "He said he could feel her struggling and possibly climbing free, which means that there is a very big chance that she'll join the hunt alongside her offspring."

Will fought and failed to suppress a shudder. Echidna herself, rising from Tartarus to join 'the hunt'. Will hated when Nico and Hazel referred to it in such a way, even if it was an accurate description. It made them sound helpless, like prey simply fleeing, rather than the warriors that they were, fighting and defending themselves. Swallowing tightly once more, Will set his jaw. "We'll defeat her. All of us together. We can do it."

Nico stared at him for a moment longer, his frown easing none for the reassurance Will offered. If anything it only settled heavier, and Will didn't need to hear his thoughts, to witness the concerns that played through them, to know what caused it. Nico continued without voicing them, however. "Which is why I need to go now."

"Why _we_ need to go now," Will corrected for the third time. He ignored the rolling of Nico's eyes. "I'm just going to keep saying it until you get it right, you know."

"Fine. Whatever. 'We', then."

"Better."

"Don't belittle me."

"I'd never do such a thing."

"Hm." Nico shot him a glare that wasn't quite sincere, folding his arms across his chest in a way that was so typical of him, so vastly different from the tender affection of only moments before, that he appeared two opposite people entirely. Will had always loved that about him, just as he loved how each persona was entirely Nico, even as different as they were.

Then Nico shook his head and his disgruntlement faded into frowning concern once more. "We have to start scouting again immediately. We need to take out the sphinx and the Caucasian eagle before Echidna rises. If she rises."

"You seem pretty convinced she's going to," Will said quietly.

Nico nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I am. Hades says that she stirs a little each time one of her children is killed but more than that I… I have reason to suspect that the sphinx may have contacted her."

Will frowned. "Why's that?"

"Just a suspicion," Nico replied with a small, tight shrug. "But a concerning one. Because the sphinx is intelligent and perceptive. She would have told Echidna about… you."

"Me?"

"All of you. All of you who are helping Hazel and me. And…" Nico trailed off, and the tightness of his face grew more pronounced, his eyes narrowing into a glare directed towards Echidna's phantom presence.

Will thrust his own worries aside. His worries for his friends, for Nico and Hazel, and steadied himself resolutely. He forced a slight, determined smile onto his face. "That doesn't change anything, Nico."

Nico shifted his glare sharply towards him. "How doesn't it?"

"Because it doesn't. What, you think that now when we head into battle against the monsters they'll be expecting more than just you and Hazel?" Will shrugged more casually than he truly felt. He could pretend, though, if it would make Nico feel better. "It's no biggie."

Nico stared at him flatly. Will supposed he wasn't quite as convinced as he'd hoped. "No biggie?"

"Exactly. We'll just do what we've always done and go about it just as we always have." He nodded his head determinedly, reaching out to tug at Nico's fringe in a manner that turned into a playful flick when Nico trained his gaze accusingly upon his hand as though it was a honing wasp. "We might just need to go about it a bit more quickly than we have before."

Nico drew his attention from scowling at Will's finger towards his eyes once more. "So you're admitting defeat?"

"In what regard, exactly?"

"That I'm right." Nico quirked his lips, raising an eyebrow. "That's a first."

Will shrugged offhandedly. "There's a first for everything. You have to be right at least once, don't you?"

"That wasn't the 'first' that I was referring to," Nico said indignantly.

Will smiled. "I know." Then he felt his smile fade. "But even if we do search quickly, you need to be careful. Take it slow. Call me a mother hen or whatever you'd like –"

"Entirely appropriately."

"- but I'm worried for a reason." Will overrode him without acknowledging his words. Nico only grunted. "I mean it, Nico. You exhausted yourself more than I've ever seen before. You scared me."

Nico stared at him unblinkingly for a moment. Then his frown gradually faded and he released a small, huffing sigh. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."

"I know you didn't," Will said. "And I know that, realistically, it was necessary. We wouldn't have been able to fight the sphinx and realistically win without losses on our side. Not if the Hesperides fought too. But I was still worried."

"You are such a mother hen," Nico murmured, but there was definite fondness in his tone.

Will smiled. "Obviously. It's what I do."

"Remember that time you told me you weren't sure if you were cut out to be a doctor?" Nico asked, his expression dropping from tight worry for a moment to fall into wistful nostaligia. "What bullshit."

Will felt his smile widen. "To be fair, I was horribly drunk at the time."

"Drunkenness makes a man's tongue loose. It doesn't necessarily paint it with lies."

"Is that a proverb?" Will said with a smirk.

"Only my own."

"You've been spending too much time with Reyna, then."

Nico shrugged. "What can I say? She's got a good head on her shoulders."

"That she does."

Will followed Nico as he climbed from the bed and they set about redressing themselves in the clothes discarded carelessly across the floor. Will had to grab Nico's shoulder as he made to start out the door wearing nothing but his thin hoodie and the pretty blue scarf he always wore. He snagged the jacket that had been forgotten from the ground.

"You know, it's still the middle of winter," Will said, hearing the long-suffering note in his own voice. "A jacket might come in handy."

Nico stared at him for a moment, visibly teetering upon the brink of objection before shrugging and taking the proffered coat. "I don't really feel like I need it, but if it would make you happy."

"It would. Lovely and all as your scarf is, it doesn't quite do the whole job."

"I had a suspicion you'd like it," Nico said, eyes downcast to draw up his zipper.

"What?"

"The scarf. Just a suspicion." Then he turned and started out of the room, pausing only to snatch up his pair of swords hanging where Will had left them on the only table in the room. Will shrugged off his confusion for Nico's words – he was fairly used to such randomness, even after their three-year intermission – and followed after him.

They arrived in the cabin to the smell of Piper's pancakes, bacon and richly salted eggs. Will inhaled deeply as he stepped through the door, drinking in the warmth and flavours both. "Piper, that smells incredible."

Piper, sweeping around the kitchen as though she had at least double the number of hands she truly did and could move at super-speed, appeared to consider Jason's attempts at assistance barely negligible. She glanced towards the door at Will's vocal entrance and beamed. "Will! Nico! Just in time for breakfast."

"Perfect timing, then, I'd say," Will replied, following Nico into the room.

Their entrance drew a chorus of welcomes and exclamations of relief into the air. Most everyone was already spread around the living area, balancing plates of steaming food and cutlery for the absence of a surface. Only Annabeth sat at the dining table, plate propped on the only area devoid of electronics, glossy pictures and smears of paper. Faces turned towards them with smiles and waves, and Hazel sighed audible as she immediately drew to Nico's side to murmur something to him that Will didn't hear. She wasn't the only one visibly relieved, Will noticed. It was paramount upon everyone face turned towards them. Even Calypso, barely upon on her feet again, seemed abruptly eased.

Everyone had been worried. They were _always_ worried about each other, should anyone fall prey to injury or illness. Will only then felt a flash of guilt surface within him for abandoning them all a day and a half ago to care for Nico in privacy when he was assured of their relative wellbeing. Maybe he should have kept Nico here with them, just in case.

Jason, Piper's designated waiter, approached them both with plates piled high with a buffet of breakfast. He smiled broadly at Nico as he handed them over. "Good to see you up on your feet again."

Nico gave a small smile, nodding. "You too. Heard you tried to kill yourself again."

"Me? Tried to –?" He glanced at Will. "Did you exaggerate my injuries maybe just a little bit?"

Will shrugged. "Not really. Nico does that well enough himself."

Nico was staring with a slight frown replacing his smile at Jason's arm. His nearly mended arm, Will noted with satisfaction, wreathed only in a supportive bandage. Austin and Kayla's status reports over the past days, and those of Percy and Annabeth via phone, had evidently been accurate. "At least you've still got two arms, I suppose."

"At least I've –? It was broken. _Broken_." Jason shook his head, glancing over his shoulder towards Percy. "Did you actually tell Will that it was about to fall off like you said you would?"

Percy grinned through a mouthful of scrambled eggs. "I might have just."

Jason turned back towards Will. "And you believed him? And told Nico?"

Will grinning, picking at a sliver of bacon off his plate and taking a bite. "Not in the slightest. Nico just knows stuff like that."

"Creepy…"

"It's a recurring theme at the moment," Nico said. He didn't have a chance to say anything more for Reyna was at his side, Austin at Will's, and they were both being dragged to the nearest available seating. Moments later Will found himself wedged between his two siblings upon the couch, comfortably warm and bathed in the rich aroma of melted butter, polished timber and the undertones of burning pine from the crackling fireplace. Comfortable. It was instantly comfortable.

Will acknowledged just that as he tucked into his breakfast. Piper was an incredible cook. It was no secret, nor was there any need for contemplation, for the reason that her restaurant, _The Cornucopia_ , was one of the most popular in New York. She had a gift that made Will wonder if all children of Aphrodite harboured master chef inclinations.

He was halfway through his meal by the time he managed to draw his attention to the room at large for more than a second. Kayla and Austin had been talking at and around him for the past few minutes but didn't seem to need his reply so he turned his gaze to the rest of the room instead.

It appeared more crowded than usual. Will suspected that such an impression was likely a result of there actually being more inhabitants present than usual – with the exception of the few days after Scylla and the Colchian Dragon had been vanquished, there was usually at least two people out on a scouting mission, or Hazel and Frank – or Will and Nico themselves – were at the flat across town.

Now it seemed bright, warm, and bubbling with activity. Someone had dragged the majority of the dining chairs away from the table, placing them in a circle they had in the 'conference meeting' of several days before. It was a far less rigid atmosphere than it had been then, however, and just about everyone was lazing about comfortably. Leo was even seated upon the floor beside Calypso's chair, half burying himself every few seconds in the Christmas tree as he made to lean back against the perceived support before remembering himself.

Will drew his gaze around the group as a whole. Leo and Calypso seemed to be engaged in a discussion with Frank, and Will noted with satisfaction that Calypso looked distinctly better than she had only days before. One could hardly have picked her from the crowd as having been loitering on death's doorstep. Leo had revamped his usual vibrancy, was smiling and chattering away at a million miles an hour. Frank actually appeared momentarily distracted from conversing with Hazel, who was in turn half-twisted in her seat towards Nico and Reyna as they murmured in their own apparently more serious discussion.

Annabeth was picking idly at her pancakes with a fork as she frowned at the screen of her computer, muttering either to herself or to Thalia at her side, leaning over her shoulder to peer at the screen herself. Percy was balanced on the back of the armchair talking to Jason who rocked backwards dangerously in his own chair as he worked his way through what appeared to be a fistful of bacon strips. Piper joined him as Will watched, propping herself precariously on the edge of his chair as she nibbled on something that looked like a cinnamon scroll. Which, naturally, Jason and Percy both made a lunge for to Piper's dextrous evasions.

It was happy. There was a general air of happiness flooding through the buzz of conversation. It was probably the calmest that Will had seen them all in a long time, and though he hoped it would last he knew it was ignorant to think it would. They were relaxed _now,_ with the confrontation with Ladon set firmly behind them, but that was just a temporary freedom. When the reality set in that they had two more Children to hunt – not to mention Echidna, should Nico's suspicions prove correct – it would pass. Will begrudged the necessity for the grim determination that would take its place.

"Will?"

Glancing towards Kayla as she spoke to him, Will speared another mouthful of pancakes from his plate with his fork. "Sorry? What was that?"

Lifting up what she held in her hand – arrows, unless Will was sorely mistaken – she waved them at him. "I said you can have a third of them."

"A third of what?"

Kayla sighed long-sufferingly, rolling her eyes towards Austin. "He wasn't listening, was he?"

Austin smiled. "Obviously not." In a gesture mimicking Kayla's, Austin too lifted a handful of arrows. They had white heads and matching fletching, Will noticed, and it took only a second to register that they were the arrows that Reyna had been gluing together several days before. "She's talking about these."

"Are they Reyna's arrows?" Will asked.

Kayla nodded, paused, then shrugged. "Well, technically yes, but she's given them to us. And we all sort of worked together to get the teeth so I think it's sort of a joint effort."

"Teeth?" Will asked. Then understanding dawned. "Are those arrowheads the Colchian Dragon's teeth?"

Kayla and Austin wore mirroring smiles. "Pretty cool, huh?" Kayla said, spinning an arrow between her fingers like a compass needle. "I'm kind of interested to see what a Spoil of War would do as a weapon."

"Why would Reyna make them into arrows?" Will asked, frowning. "Weren't they historically planted in the earth or something?"

Austin nodded. "Yeah, planted and then sown and grown to produce a legion of battle-hungry and super elite warriors. Apparently. Makes you wonder about the Spoils, right?"

Will could only nod his agreement, even as he turned his attention down to the clutch of arrows Kayla passed him. Nico and Hazel kept the Spoils from their confrontations over the years in their flat, and only a few of them were actually useful. The hydra arrows, for one, which Kayla seemed to love like her firstborn child. The Nemean Lion pelt had been shaped somehow into a cloak but Will had never seen Nico or Hazel wear it. There was Orthrus too, who hadn't made an appearance since their confrontation with Cerberus but Nico had mentioned the contribution of on several occasions for his support with other monsters in the past.

And then there were the others. The tips of a pair of ivory tusks that Will had asked and been informed were from Phaea, the Crommomyian Sow, but which served little actual function but for decoration. The still-dripping-with-venom snake-head of the Chimaera's tail he supposed could have been useful, and then there were the gorgons' heads, which were kept permanently wrapped at all times and maybe, _maybe,_ could be used. A bucketful amount of opalescent scales was all that was was left of Scylla. They were pretty, Will supposed, or would have been had he not known from where they'd come. Pretty useless too, all things considered.

The arrows that Kayla had given him were of a pale wood so light it was almost as white as the toothy heads themselves. Similarly white feathers – only feather-mimics, Will knew, but they felt almost soft enough to be real – lined the end. They were perfectly balanced, he noted, holding one aloft upon his index finger. "Seems like Reyna's got a talent for making arrows."

Both Kayla and Austin nodded. Austin cast an appreciative glance across the room to said ex-praetor. "A little ironic, really, seeing as she doesn't use a bow herself."

"I bet we could convince her to if we combined forces," Kayla said.

Will snorted, shaking his head. "What would be the point of doing that, exactly? As far as I'm concerned, she's more than capable of fighting with her spear and dagger."

"Yes, but everyone should use a bow."

"I feel you're somewhat biased, Kay," Austin said, smiling once more.

"Not in the least," Kayla replied with a shake of her head. "It makes sense to use a bow and arrow from a distance before you have to get up close. Now, I'm not saying that using a sword or something is _bad_ but…"

She continued with her rant in a condescending yet persuasive tone, Austin staring with growing amusement, but Will was momentarily distracted from her words by a bark of laughter and exclamation from across the room. He turned to the sight of Leo recovering from his laughter before launching himself into another gesticulating discussion, Frank leaning away from his in what appeared to be an attempt to avoid being smacked. Will could hear his words from across the room as though he were yelling in his ear.

"No, but seriously! I nearly shit myself! Not just one but four monsters, and I had to do it all by myself because _somebody_ ," he turned to shoot exaggerated daggers at Piper across the room, "neglected her watch."

"I hadn't neglected it, Leo," Piper said in a bored tone that suggested to Will that they'd argued the point more than once before. She had half sprawled across Jason's lap by that point, almost horizontal in her recline. "I needed to use the bathroom. I know for a fact that you've 'neglected your watch' for longer periods of time before."

"Yeah, but never when there were monsters lying in wait to spring forth at the first opportunity."

Will felt himself smiling. It had happened before, on several occasions in fact, that monsters had appeared at their cabin, drawn by their demigod presence. Small fry only, really, and appearing even less intimidating for their diminutive comparison to the Children. Still, no one protested the necessity of maintaining a watch in the sleeping hours. Will had taken his own share of lookout over the past month. They were made remarkably less tedious when Nico joined him, and it was the only time that Will was – well, not happy, but at least not as ferociously frustrated by the prospect of Nico's sleeplessness.

Piper was speaking once more, lifting her head to peer across the room at Leo. "Oh, so you knew there weren't going to be monsters anywhere about when you fell to sleep on your watch a week ago, huh?"

"That was only for five minutes!" Leo exclaimed defensively as the rest of the room fell into snickers. "Five sodding minutes, and Annabeth was already up and about by then."

"Five minutes is still five minutes," Jason said, grinning widely. "They used to kill people in the army for doing that, you know."

"Yes, thank you for your contribution, Jase," Leo drawled sarcastically. Then he deliberately turned back to Hazel and Nico, who Will realised he must have been speaking to before, and rolled his eyes. "All I'm saying is that it might have been nice to have a couple of extra sword hands along to help out. That's all."

Nico, still picking at his breakfast – only about half-eaten, Will noticed, which he tried not to frown at – paused to glance up at Leo. "I don't see how Hazel and I could have made any particular difference specifically. Everyone here knows how to use a sword."

"Yeah, but no one else can get rid of them completely," Leo said. "Not like you two with your 'special' swords." He quoted his words with his fingers and a grin.

Will immediately felt his wariness rise. He knew that both Nico and Hazel weren't exactly comfortable with the permanency of the deaths they inflicted upon the Children, even if those Children were attempting to destroy them with equal fervour. Before he could speak, though, Reyna was doing so for him.

"I think that's a little presumptuous to suggest that all monsters' souls should be permanently vanquished," she said with a frown. "Monsters they may be but they're still creatures."

Unfortunately, Will almost wished that Reyna too had remained silent for the flinch that her words provoked from Nico and Hazel. He wondered if anyone else noticed. How was it not clear that they didn't like the permanency of their attacks in the slightest?

"That all depends on how you look at the monsters, though," Frank reasoned aloud. "Comparatively, monsters are different from other creatures and animals. They're pretty much birthed to wreak discord across the world and to hunt demigods."

"And to be fair," Thalia called from across the room, "Sylphs are kind of the dumbest of the dumb. You don't get much more air-headed than a sylph."

"Is 'sylph' even the right name for the ones you saw, Leo?" Jason asked, glancing between Leo and his littler older sister.

Thalia shrugged. "It's what they are. And it's a better word than 'air spirits'."

"So you mean I'm justified in completely obliterating them with fire?" Leo asked, snapping his fingers in a spark as if to demonstrate exactly what he meant.

Thalia shrugged once more, rising from where she'd been leaning over Annabeth's shoulders. "Yeah, I guess. Probably justified in thinking to kill them permanently, too. They're stupid, cause nothing but mayhem, and they're creatures of the air who revel in tormenting those with a fear of heights. What more reason do you need?"

"That maybe we shouldn't," Hazel muttered. Will caught an edge to her voice that he hadn't heard before, though her face remained carefully blank. "Maybe because it's a bad idea to kill too many monsters that way."

"A bad idea?" Percy turned in his seat towards her, eyebrows raised. "Surely a world without monsters can't be bad. Would it?"

"Imagine, a world without monsters…" Kayla murmured at Will's side.

"Freedom," Austin sighed wistfully.

"Yes, but there's more to it than that," Hazel continued, only for Frank to hasten to cut her off.

"Sorry. Sorry, we know. I'm sure Leo didn't mean it like that." He spared Leo a meaningful glance that caused him to start, blink in confusion and yet nod in ignorant agreement. Frank glanced back to Hazel with a small, faintly placating smile. "We don't mean to pressure you like that or anything. I completely understand that you wouldn't want to – to vanquish monsters in quite the way that Stygian weapons do. Or at least, I understand as much as I can."

"No, you don't," Hazel said, her voice abruptly harsh. Will blinked. She actually sounded angry with Frank for what could have been the first time in his memory. "You don't understand what I'm talking about at all."

"Hazel," Nico said warningly, but Hazel overrode him.

"No, Nico, this is long overdue. We should have told them when we first explained about Stygian iron."

"Told us what?" Will said. He hadn't realised he'd risen to his feet until he was halfway across the room towards Nico. He didn't know why but something in Hazel's tone unnerved him. It set him on edge. He had a feeling that something – that the something Hazel was referring to – was more significant than any of them had considered was kept from them.

The room had fallen silent, everyone stilling as Will stopped beside Nico. Nico and Hazel were staring at each other, exchanging silent words in that way they seemed able to do with nothing but blank stares and closed lips. Finally Hazel shook her head. "I don't care about myself, Nico. You should know that by now. I care about you."

"You should care about yourself too," Frank said, a touch resentfully, but Hazel didn't even seem to hear him. Her attention was completely trained upon Nico.

Nico slowly shook his own head in reply. "I don't know if it's such a good idea to say."

"Nico," Will said warningly. "Don't even think of trying to hide something from us. Something that's obviously important." He dropped down to his knees before him, keeping his eyes fixed and unblinking. "It's something dangerous, isn't it? Something dangerous to you?"

"And something to do with the Stygian weapons?" Frank added. His voice was just as quiet and intense as Will's as he leant forwards in his seat.

Nico and Hazel exchanged another glance, Nico's eyes narrowing slightly in continued objection, before they both seemed to reach a conclusion. Tension still thrummed through the both of them yet they slumped slightly in a way Will recognised as resignation.

Hazel was the one to speak, addressing the room at large and everyone in it as they all turned silently towards her with a definite wariness. "Stygian weapons do permanently vanquish monsters, yes. They shatter souls so that they can't travel to the Fields of Asphodel and be reborn or, in the case of monsters, be thrown back into Tartarus."

"I never really understood why they could do that," Reyna said quietly, frowning at Nico and Hazel in turn. "Because they're bathed in the River Styx? How does that work?"

Hazel only shook her head while Nico bowed his own, eyes trained downwards. "I don't know. No one quite knows. Not even Hades and he was the one who originally forged it. All we know is that using it, something with such ultimate and destructive power, comes at a price."

A sharp hiss of inhalation sounded from across the room in Annabeth's direction. "Of course. I had considered but never deduced… of course it would have a payment." From the corner of his eye, from where he was staring unwaveringly at Nico's bowed head and frowning face, Will saw her rise from her seat. "What is the price?"

Hazel opened her mouth to speak, then looked at Nico as though for confirmation. Will had noticed her doing as much before when she was uncertain, as though in such instances of discomfort she would seek the guidance of her elder brother. Not that Nico seemed any less uneasy for the situation but…

It was he who spoke to continued, his voice quiet and brief. "From what we can gather, from how I _feel_ – it's exhausting." He shrugged as though it was no big deal, though the hardness of his expression and the frown creasing even deeper into his brow suggested otherwise. He reached up in grasped Hazel's shoulder. It was a slightly awkward gesture but heartfelt nonetheless. "It reminds me of what happens when I shadow-travel too much. It sort of takes something out of you that I don't quite…"

Hazel took up where he trailed off. "After killing a monster with my spatha, even a smaller one, for me it feels sort of like a heavy weight settles upon my shoulders and my feet, dragging me down. Almost as though I'm sinking into the earth. It's worse the stronger the monster is, but happens with the small fry too. And the feeling usually dissipates a little bit I think –"

"Or you get used to it," Nico muttered.

"- but sometimes, I don't know, I just feel like I'm getting more and more tired no matter how much I sleep. Right afterwards, sometimes I can't sleep at all. I know Nico –" she paused, then seemed to change the direction of her thoughts. "I sort of lose my appetite, too, because it makes me feel sick to eat. I know Nico's never had much of a one in the first place but he – you get it too, right?" At Nico's nod, Hazel pressed her lips tightly together as though pained. She glanced around the room, and Will guessed that, despite their once-reluctant attitude towards sharing their difficulties, she felt a desperate need to admit her troubles. What must it have been like to keep such a weight to oneself for so long? For both of them? "I think that Nico just looks more and more tired every time he uses his sword."

"You too," Nico agreed quietly, staring at his sister sidelong.

Hazel nodded. "Probably." Surprisingly she turned towards Will. He had to fight to meet her eyes, to draw his stare from Nico for the rush of thoughts, the demands, the _why didn't you tell me?_ and _oh Gods, what's it doing to them?_ He supposed that at least he could be thankful that they were telling him – them – at all, but still. Hazel's voice was but a murmur when she spoke to Will. "I'm sure you've noticed it. Nico gets really pale when he's fighting too much, and it doesn't go away. It only gets worse. It's not just from the tiredness. It's the shadows, because they're what he works closest with. With me, I think because of my affiliation to the earth, I feel as though I'm being dragged down towards it. Sometimes I'll even find myself literally sinking. With Nico…"

Will found himself staring at Nico once more. He thought about each time he'd frowned and scolded Nico for not caring for himself, for not eating right or sleeping enough, or getting out in the sunlight and the paleness that resulted from it. He'd been wrong. Right in that Nico was unwell but so, so wrong. _Gods, killing those monsters… it's tearing them both apart too_.

The room had fallen silent, immobilised by the horrifying prospect of what had been revealed. Reaching forwards, swallowing tightly to rid the taste of bile from the back of his throat, Will grasped one of Nico's hands where it rested on his knee. He pale hands, thin fingers that were blessedly solid as they hadn't been days before when he'd passed out. It was perhaps the worst thing he could recall witnessing, that moment after a particularly exhausting bout of shadow-travel when Nico's fingers would seem to dissipate into shadows themselves. Will's grasp tightened, probably painfully, but Nico didn't complain. He simply stared back into Will's eyes, as though for once understanding and not objecting to his need to simply touch him, to hold him, to be assured of his _there_ -ness.

"Fuck," someone whispered from across the room, and just like that the spell of silence was broken.

"You need to stop using them, then," Percy said immediately, unshakeable denial of refusal in his voice.

"I agree," Jason said, and Will saw them both stand and fold their arms in identical stances of determination. They weren't the only ones. Everyone around the room from what Will could see had adopted similar expressions. "If this is going to hurt you – even worse, if it could kill you – you both need to stop using them."

Nico's resigned expression faded as he turned towards Percy and Jason both with a glare. "Don't be stupid. We can't do that."

"Yes you bloody well can," Percy said in nearly a growl. "No monsters are worth killing if it's going to end up hurting you in the process just by using your fucking swords."

"That's the problem though, isn't it?" Annabeth said. She walked slowly across the room, frowning worriedly and glancing between Nico and Hazel before turning to Percy. "Damned if they do and damned if they don't."

"What?" Jason asked, eyebrows dropping in a confused frown. "Why would you -?"

"She means," Thalia said, following after Annabeth. "That if they use their weapons to kill the monsters then it will hurt them. But if they don't, or if they use other weapons, then the monsters and Echidna's children will just keep chasing them over and over and over again."

"Something's got to give," Piper murmured, her chin dropping and eyes falling to the ground.

Will didn't realise that Kayla had stepped up behind him until she spoke. "Then what do we do? If we're damned either way, what do we -?"

"We act quickly, that's what," Nico interrupted, his voice blunt and forbidding any argument. "We just put up with it until we're done."

"We've resolved ourselves to that end for years now," Hazel added with a nod. Her own expression had become similarly resolved once more, the worried unease fading as soon as their explanation was done.

"You're sure it wouldn't work if someone else tried to use the Stygian weapons? Try to spread the load?" Calypso asked, head physically turning as she shifted her gaze between Nico and Hazel. "You're _sure_ it won't work?"

They both nodded before Nico replied. "We're about as sure as we can be," he said. "Hades can't destroy the monster's because he's a god – apparently they can't interfere with that kind of shit – and only the blood of Hades can truly wield Stygian iron to its greatest potential."

"What if we made a replica, a mimic of Stygian iron or something?" Leo asked. His face was completely devoid of amusement in a way that Will recognised as being reminiscent of his engineering mindset. "Something that produced the same effects but without the side effects?"

"I – I don't know," Hazel said, frowning. "I don't know if that would work."

"I would think that if it wasn't bathed in the River Styx then it simply wouldn't be Stygian iron." Annabeth said with a frustrated sigh. "And I'm also assuming that it's that feature which is draining upon the both of you when you wield your weapons. It makes sense that way."

"That's what we've thought," Hazel said with a nod. "We've actually given this a fair amount of thought, you know."

"We're not entirely stupid," Nico said. "Not quite the brains trust, but we have had some time to come up with some alternative ideas."

Will saw Annabeth give a small smile. It fell short of humour. "Don't short-change yourself. It was just a suggestion."

"So what do we do?" Percy asked. "You obviously can't fight anymore –"

"We have to," Nico cut in.

"Anymore than you have to, then," Percy corrected himself. "So what, we just try and get it over with as soon as possible?"

"That's the plan," Nico said with a nod.

"As soon as possible," Hazel said. "Before Echidna rises."

Will could only assume from Hazel's words that Hades had spoken to her of his speculations just as he had Nico. Just as he assumed from the lack of overt response from the rest of the room that Hazel must have in turn passed on the message to the rest of the room. No one seemed surprised by her words.

A pause stretched, silent and thoughtful, sombre with the reality of what they had been told. In the midst of it, of his brooding and worrying, a thought occurred to Will. "When it's over… if you stop using your sword and knives," he stared at Nico unblinkingly, holding his gaze. "Will you recover? If it's no longer draining upon you, can you recoup what you've lost?"

He could see the moment that Nico switched from offering an empty reassurance to speaking the truth. He pursed his lips, took a slightly deeper breath, then shrugged heavily. "I don't know. Maybe."

"Hopefully," Hazel murmured at his side.

Will nodded slowly. It sickened him, the thought that Nico might be permanently damaged by the use of a weapon that _surely_ he hadn't always known the effects of. _Why hadn't Hades done something about it? Why had he let them use the weapons at all? They're his children and he just…_

A sudden burst of hatred for the Lord of the Underworld abruptly rose within him. Will had always been unnerved, uneasy, intimidated and yes, maybe even a little scared of Hades. But now… He didn't care what justification the god used, that he'd told them eventually, that there was no one else that could do what Nico and Hazel could do. It was still wrong. Nico, _Will's_ Nico, shouldn't have to… he shouldn't have been made to…

Gritting his teeth, Will nodded with the same resolve that he could feel thrumming from his friends. He felt like he was speaking for all of them in that moment. "Alright then. Alright, that's… not alright at all actually. But it's what we can aim for." He nodded once more. "You two will fight as few monsters with your Stygian weapons as possible until we find the remaining Children. Then, kill the Children. Get rid of Echidna. And then never use them again."

"Unless necessary," Nico said with a frown.

"Never. Again," Will ground out, and he was sure that his voice was harsh but he could barely hear it. Not through the concern, the fear, the anger thumping alongside his heartbeat in his ears. Nico met his gaze warily for a moment, with a guardedness that slowly faded into acceptance.

Yes, that was what Will wanted. What he needed. Nothing but acceptance, at least in this instance.

Will exchanged a glance with Frank, his primary comrade-in-arms in every situation involving the dangers posed to Nico and Hazel even more than in everyone else. He exchanged the same with Reyna at Nico's side, noting the protectiveness upon her face. He saw the determination that settled on Leo's and Calypso's faces, the preparedness and resolution rippling through everyone else in the room like a spreading tide. And suddenly Will was all for Nico's desire to postpone a period of rest. Even recovering from their weariness could be pushed into the realm of 'less important'.

Will had never backed a quest quite so heartily. End the Children? Defeat Echidna? Protect Nico and Hazel and reach a time where they would never have to use the Stygian weapons again? Will felt his jaw tighten almost painfully.

He'd never sought fulfilment of a quest quite so fervently as he did now.


	17. Chapter 17 - Ensuing

A/N: A bit of a short one, I'm afraid. I apologise for that, and for the following chapters that might be a little shorter than usual. I guess it's... climactic?

* * *

 **Chapter 17: Ensuing**

Nico paused in step. Paused, and tilted his head slightly. He could just hear it, could just…

Raising his Imperial gold sword, he turned slowly in the direction of the sound. He used his ears more than his eyes, his sixth sense for monsters more than either of them. The thinly spread trees of the forest was brightly lit by midmorning light, reflecting off the snow and painting pale shadows across the ground. There were no monsters that he could _see_ but he was sure… he could sense -

There. To the left, spinning, sword rising, Nico turned towards the monster. A giant of a monster, a manticore by the looks of it, leonine body trembling lightly from either the cold or bottled aggression, scorpion tail curling over its head. With a widening of its human-like jaw, it emitted a guttural, trumpeting roar and –

It jerked as an arrow speared through its mouth. Jerked once, froze, and then a second time, and a third as arrow after arrow pierced into its mouth. There was a moment of stillness, of quiet as Nico stared at the stuttering monster with sword still raised redundantly, before the manticore groaned, keeled forwards, and burst into dust.

Nico stared at the swirling dust that slowly settled onto the snow-laden forest floor, at the arrows that clattered to the centre of the mess. He regarded it all with hooded eyes, attempting to keep hold of his rapidly resurfacing exasperation, before slowly, slowly, turning towards Will. Will, who was only just lowering his bow, nodding in satisfaction.

Nico stared at him unblinkingly, sword lowering. He stared, and stared, keeping his expression carefully composed. It took him all of twenty seconds to deduce that Will, who hadn't moved or shifted his gaze since he'd killed the monster, was deliberately avoiding his gaze.

 _Fuck that, don't you pretend to ignore me, you idiot._ Turning to face Will front on, Nico reached over his shoulder and slid his sword back into its sheath. Then he folded his arms and reaffixed Will with his hooded stare. "Really?"

"Really what?" Will asked casually, slinging his bow over his shoulder. He still wasn't looking at Nico.

"Was that really necessary?"

Will shrugged – still not looking – and started across the thirty feet towards the pile of manticore dust. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Nico watched him go, resolutely refusing to follow in his wake. He closed his eyes for a moment, schooling himself, before speaking once more. "You know, I call you an idiot but I doubt you're that unintelligent."

"That's heartening to hear," Will called over his shoulder, raising his voice to cross the distance between them. Nico watched as he bent down and picked up the trio of Celestial bronze-tipped arrows he'd shot at the monster. Slipping them without thought into his quiver, he turned back towards Nico and finally met his gaze. "Your good opinion means so much to me."

"Don't belittle me, you bastard."

"I'm not belittling you."

"Really? So making sure that every monster we come across is vanquished before I get a chance to get within striking distance isn't being condescending?"

Will shook his head easily as he walked back towards Nico. "Not in the slightest. It's called being smart and acting defensively. And making sure you don't overly exert yourself."

And there it was. The argument that Nico had heard countless times in the past week. _Making sure you don't exert yourself_. Honestly, if Nico exerted himself any less he would grow exhausted from simply not doing _anything_.

Since he and Hazel had revealed the whole truth to their friends – a revelation that Nico was still dubious as to the correctness and necessity of voicing – he'd begun to feel like a sickly child with an army of helicopter parents that would leap to his side the second he rose to his feet in case he 'needed the support'. Quite literally at times; Nico had on several occasions had to pin Jason with a glare from 'offering him a hand' when he had literally been rising from the couch. As though he were an invalid. No, it worse than that, because he didn't even _need_ it, regardless of how often he told his friends as much. Nico thought that even Hazel was now coming to regret the hastiness of her decision to speak. She was afflicted by helicopter parents just as much as he was.

Nico didn't need the proffered hand of support from Jason. He didn't need the extra portion of dinner from Piper, or the suggestion that he should make sure he eats a little more because he was looking thin. He didn't need Annabeth's suggestion to take a break after only three hours on the computer, or Percy's offer to take over when he wouldn't _ever_ let anyone touch his computer. And Reyna's accusing glares to his sword and knives, a glare almost identical to Thalia's and similarly directed at Hazel's Stygian spatha, were utterly pointless. What good would glaring do?

Most of all, Nico did _not_ need Will mother hen-ing him. He'd gotten worse than he ever had been before, and that was saying something, because there were frequent intervals in the past that Nico could recall off the top of his head where Will's overprotectiveness had nearly driven him crazy. Now, he was like a man with a mission.

 _A solid seven hours in bed every night, regardless of whether you sleep, and no, don't even think about accompanying me for my turn of night watch. You don't like me hugging you at night? Too bad, it's sharing body warmth and at least then I'll rest assured you're not taking off anywhere._

 _Three meals a day with additional snacks and you have to eat at least half of the whole plate because otherwise, I swear, I'm going to shove it down your throat._

 _Minimise practice sessions to once a day so that you don't tire yourself more than you already have because really, alongside scouting and monster fighting, do you even need to practice?_

 _Don't spend too long on the computer unless it's for recreational purposes._

 _One scouting mission every two days at the most. More than that is unnecessary and too taxing._

 _Always wear at least three layers when you go outside and two when you're inside. I don't care if you feel warm, warm is good. Don't argue._

 _And don't even think of going anywhere by yourself. Just don't._

Nico wasn't sure what he was expressly concerned for in that final order, whether Will feared an unexpected monster attack or that Nico would simply collapse. It was stupid, anyway. Just like everything else was stupid. Stupid, and rapidly wearing down Nico's nerves.

It wasn't like it was necessary. Not in the slightest, because he wasn't a fucking incompetent, fragile little flower. Yes, Nico was tired, but he'd been tired for three bloody years. Longer even, when he thought about it. Yes, he had difficulty eating, and sleeping, and usually neglected keeping himself warm, but it wasn't doing him any harm. Not really. And cutting down his sword practice and scouting missions, when Will knew that time was of the essence?

Nico and Hazel had shared more than one conversation about the foolishness of their actions in telling everyone. Foolish. _Foolish_.

And now, Will's overprotectiveness was reaching new heights. Because for each of the three scouting missions they'd been on in the past week, Will had seemed intent upon ensuring that Nico did absolutely nothing.

Turning, Nico made his way along the unchartered route that they'd been heading. He heard Will fall into step beside him but didn't glance his way in acknowledgement. "You know, it's not actually a problem if I don't use the Stygian sword."

"What's not a problem?" Will asked innocently.

Nico shot him a flat, sidelong glare. It actually seemed to make Will smile rather than trip him off his guilty pedestal. "Everything. All of it. I can vanquish monsters with Prosperina's sword and it won't affect me any more than it would you."

Will shrugged. "Yeah, I know."

"You do realise I haven't ever been using my Stygian sword on any of our scouts, right?"

"I know."

"Which would make your actions redundant."

Will picked at the wood of his bow distractedly and with more attention than it warranted as he shrugged once more. "I don't see how getting rid of monsters from a distance rather than letting either of us get too close is a bad thing."

Nico scowled. "Oh, and I'm sure the fact that all of the monsters just _happen_ to focus more upon you when you do just that has nothing to do with that at all, hm?"

"Nothing at all."

"Bullshit."

Will grinned at him overly brightly. "I try."

"Aren't kids of Apollo supposed to have a thing for honesty rather than basically breathing white lies?" Nico asked pointedly, shoving his hands into his pockets.

Will snorted. "You've said that before. Where you get such nonsense is a mystery to me."

"So the fact that Apollo's the God of Truth-Telling has absolutely no contribution to the matter?"

"None at all."

Nico shook his head. "You're such an idiot."

"I thought you just said I was smart?"

"You're twisting my words. And even if I did I take them back. You're an idiot."

Will just laughed, following Nico as he led them back in the direction that they would meet their friends.

One week. One week they'd been searching for any trace of the sphinx, of the Caucasian eagle, and they'd found nothing. Even Annabeth and Piper's connections seemed to come up blank. Nico suspected the sphinx had something to do with it, that she was tampering with any news or stories that may have drawn attention to her or her remaining sibling. She was smart, Nico knew. Smarter than she had been, according to Annabeth and Percy's recollections of the past, just as her brothers and sisters had become since Echidna had instilled her compulsive order. It was likely that somehow her intelligence had pervaded the system, had infiltrated the media and erased her presence and that of the giant eagle. As she had done previously, Nico considered, given that there had been nothing but faint consideration that Ladon would be at the Orchard Ruins in the first place.

They had found nothing, and it was infuriating. Every day they delayed was a day closer to the possibility of Echidna rising. Echidna, the mother of monsters herself, who would no doubt hold the capacity to crush them all like a bug beneath her serpentine foot. Nico didn't even know if they _could_ defeat her, let alone face her alongside the combined forces of two of her children. And yet no matter how they raked the countryside, chased possible sources in scouting missions or traversed the regions surrounding Silverwater with the suspicion that she would be drawn to their temporary residence, they found not a trace of any of them. The sphinx left not a hair or a footprint in the snow, nor was their evidence of the Hesperides, as Nico suspected that they were likely still accompanying her.

Which was what had led them back to the Orchard Ruins, to trekking around the plains and forests that surrounded it with the hopes of finding something that would point them in the direction they'd gone. Nico and Will had headed out that morning alongside Reyna, Jason, Calypso and Leo, but they'd found nothing. No evidence that the sphinx or even Ladon had once resided in the Mist-shrouded castle. Not as far as Nico could discern, anyway.

If only… if only it could have been they who found them.

The sun was scaling to midday by the time Nico recognised the area that was supposed to be their meeting place. Supposed to be, because clearly such a meeting wasn't going to take place with any particular immediacy given the absence of the rest of their friends. Nico sat down upon the chair-shaped rock that was the marker of the site. He dropped an elbow onto his knee and scanned around him for any sign of his friends. "Are we early?"

Will, ever the practical man, briefly shucked up his jacket sleeve and glanced at his watch. He frowned. "No. If anything we're late. Only by about five minutes, but still."

"Should we be worried?"

"Aren't you always worried?"

"No need to rub my face in it," Nico muttered, frowning down at his shoes. It was true, but Nico didn't have to admit it, or have anyone else voice the reality aloud.

Will gave a smile that Nico could feel more than see from the corner of his eye. "I don't think that's a bad thing, you know. That you care what happens to other people. So long as it doesn't encroach upon your own safety and wellbeing."

Nico lifted his gaze to follow Will as he strolled to Nico's side and dropped a hand upon his shoulder. Will liked to do that now even more than he had in the past. Such simple contact seemed to ease some of the tension that he constantly held. Nico couldn't even bring himself to shrug it off anymore, and if he maybe leaned into the touch slightly… well, it was a benefit that he didn't have to acknowledge aloud. "You know, maybe you should take a leaf out of your own book. Look after _you_ a little more, too."

Will's smile widened. "Don't tell me you're actually admitting you're concerned for me?"

"What? Where did you get that notion from?"

"'Look after _you_ a little more'," Will quoted, dropping down onto the rock beside Nico. It was just slightly too small for the both of them to sit comfortably but Will didn't seem to care. Nico didn't all that much either. "Careful, Nico. People might start thinking you have a heart."

Nico frowned then, for good measure, drove his elbow into Will's ribs hard enough for him to grunt in a cough of air. "You act like you don't know I care about you."

Will chuckled. "I know. It's just nice to hear you say it sometimes."

"Then I'll have to strive to do so even less often."

"And you wonder why I don't say things like that? You snatch it away from me as soon as you know."

"Oh, I don't wonder, " Nico said with a smirk. He leaned back into the chair-rock. "I know exactly _._ "

He'd barely settled himself comfortably when Reyna appeared. Quite literally appeared for she was running with such speed that she seemed to teleport from thin air. Nico opened his mouth to offer a greeting but found himself starting to his feet instead when he saw her face. "Reyna, what -?"

"Thank the Gods," she gasped, skidding to a stop before them. "I didn't know if it was a good idea to leave or not but if the sphinx comes – if you're not there –"

"What's wrong?" Will demanded, already on his feet. His bow was off his shoulder as quickly as Nico had immediately unsheathed his sword. His Stygian sword, hand grasping for the black hilt at the barest mention of the sphinx. "What happened?"

"The Hesperides happened," Reyna panted. She spoke as she was already turning back the way she'd come and beckoning them after her. "Appeared out of nowhere and attacked Jason and me. We were just lucky that Leo and Calypso weren't far off." Then she was away, tearing through the forest in the path of her own footprints once more. Nico didn't wait. He didn't pause to glance at Will, to call another question for explanation. They didn't need one.

The Hesperides were here. The nymphs of the Garden, not only known for their deadliness but now likely sparked with an anger for 'their Ladon's death. Nico didn't like to think of what rage drove them to fight his friends. He could only hope that they hadn't managed to kill anyone.

The forest flashed past them as they raced after Reyna. Nico fought against the urge to simply slip into his shadows and dive ahead, fearful that he might lose the direction should he take such a chance. It vexed him, only doubling his worry, and his hand tightened almost painfully upon the hilt of his sword. He pumped his legs at a galloping pace, eyes trained upon the braid whipping from the back of Reyna's head before him, the tail of her spear clutched in hand.

They were a distance away. It was probably why Nico and Will hadn't heard them in the first place. A distance and a decline later, and Nico had to slide to a stop himself to avoid tumbling head over heels down the crater-like ditch the size of a football field. Jason, Leo and Calypso were below. His friends – and the Hesperides.

They fought like wild animals, entirely removed from the impression that their delicate, beautiful forms would suggest. More than that, they seemed to work in synchrony – where one lunged for Calypso, another would have her back to drive off Jason's flying attacks, and where one struggled against Leo's sword, another would fly to her aid and break the straining stand-off of locked weapons. Nico could already see flecks of blood splattering the slurry of mud and snow and he didn't think they were from the Hesperides. If they were, their injuries didn't seem to slow them any.

Reyna was leaping down the slope fast enough that when she landed it was in a roll. She was on her feet a second later, tearing towards the fight as though to make up for the lost time she'd lost retrieving Nico and Will. Will was already nocking an arrow to his bow as he followed and Nico didn't need any further prompting to throw himself into the battle. He was already snatching his bony armband of Orthrus from beneath his jacket, throwing it to the ground and arousing the immense bull from its splintered pieces to charge headlong down the hill at his unspoken orders. Skeletons were fairly appalling in the snow and Orthrus stumbled and nearly lost his footing, but they'd likely need all the help they could get in such a frantic fight. Nico lurched at step forwards to follow but –

But he paused. He paused because… he felt it. He felt her.

Demigods had a sixth sense for monsters. It was one they honed as they grew older – sometimes it arose as an itch at the back of the neck, a faint throbbing in the temple, a twitch of the fingers or a sudden breathlessness. For Nico, it was all in the light. He'd always been touched by the shadows, and when he felt a monster it was like a darkness on the edge of his vision, drawing his attention. This time it was so pronounced that Nico wondered that none of the rest of the demigods had felt her arrive. Or maybe he was just hyperaware of the offspring. Maybe…

Nico wanted to help his friends. He desperately wanted to follow Will and Reyna, to throw himself, sword spinning, at the Hesperides without even a care for the fact that the Stygian sword would destroy them permanently, even if they didn't deserve it. Anything to help his friends. But as his gaze was drawn over his shoulder, locked upon the sphinx as she prowled towards him, Nico couldn't leave. Not because he was frozen in terror but because… because if he followed his friends, he would be leading the sphinx straight to them.

She stalked towards him like a lioness skirting the snow towards her prey. Her enormous tawny wings were folded upon her back though slightly raised as though straining to resist the urge to spread and throw her into flight. Her size was even more impressive up close instead of half a room away, even more distinctive for the brightness of the day where it had been shrouded in shadow before. Her heavy footsteps made crunching sounds in the snow and there was a spreading smile upon her eerily human face. Nico raised his sword to point towards her. The black tip didn't waver.

The sphinx paused barely twenty paces away, cocking her head enough to make the thick-chained blue necklace she wore tinkle slightly. Not for the first time Nico was reminded of the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland. A twisted, gigantic Cheshire cat that, though barely taller than him and with a human mouth, he swore had the ability to swallow him whole. "Hello, son of Hades. It has taken you long enough to find me again."

Nico was aware of the sounds of fighting behind him, of the clang of metal upon metal, the cry of someone – was that Reyna? But he couldn't look. He couldn't shake his attention from the sphinx, from her gaze fastened upon him in lambent gold that glowed vividly even in the sunlight. Eyes bright, a little red, and almost manic. He swallowed. "If you wanted a confrontation so badly, you could have made yourself a little easier to find."

The sphinx cocked her head back the other way, then began a slow prowl around him, trekking a half-circle that pressed him against the edge of the slope towards the football field. Nico felt as though he were being pinned against a wall. "Easier? What easier place to search for me than in the place where you last looked?"

Nico shook his head, glaring down the length of his sword. "Only an idiot would stay in the place their enemy last saw them. It's too obvious."

"Perhaps too obvious is the perfect reason to stay?" The sphinx said, fangs visible for her grin.

Abruptly, Nico knew she was right. What better place to hide than a place they'd already checked? It was only for Annabeth's resigned suggestion that they maybe look for clues at the Orchard Ruins that they came back in the first place.

They'd found their clue. A very, very big clue. Unfortunately, that clue just so happened to have sharp teeth, claws and a quartet of vengeful and furious nymphs at its beck and call.

"Right," he muttered, affording himself a mental kick. "I guess it makes sense."

"Of course it does." The sphinx nodded, turning in her prowl to make her way back around the half-circle once more. Nico followed her with his eyes, scanning for the slightest movement, the slightest indication that she would leap and strike at him. Or worse, that she would attempt to make a break around him for his friends. "I'm so happy to see you, you understand. Our last confrontation was perhaps the most enjoyable I have had in quite some time."

"Enjoyable?" Nico snorted, though the offhandedness of his attitude was hardly as genuine as he attempted to appear. He followed the sphinx's pacing with the point of his sword as she turned and prowled back in the opposite direction. "Yeah, I'll bet. You've always been the monster who likes tormenting others."

"Quite," the sphinx acknowledged. "But no, that is not my reason. You see, I have been much deprived of intelligent conversation over the years. Your engagement in my riddling trivia was delectable."

Nico couldn't suppress a shudder at the purr of her words. They seemed to caress his shoulders, a gentle touch yet slimy and foreboding. He felt himself withdraw slightly, only to have his attention dragged over his shoulder once more by a sharp cry. He didn't even get to see whom it came from, however, before the sphinx dragged at his attention.

" _Do not ignore me, son of Hades_."

Whipping his head back towards the monster, Nico flinched and nearly fell backwards down the slope. The sphinx seemed to have simply appeared halfway across the distance between them, barely ten paces away. Her shoulders were bunched, wings raised slightly further and fangs bared in something that couldn't possibly be described as a smile. Her tail lashed back and forth behind her, whipping the air in audible smacks.

Nico raised his sword towards her once more, grounding himself in a low stance of readiness. He readied himself to leap into fighting action at a moment's notice. Glaring at the sphinx – it was glare or cower and he would _never_ cower before one of the Children – Nico let his lip curl. "I'm not ignoring you, trust me. What do you want?"

The sphinx's snarl eased slightly into a visage more reminiscent of a smile yet not quite resembling it. She eased out of her huntress crouch slightly and began to pace in her half-circle once more, trekking a new path at that steady raidus of ten feet. Nico turned with her motions, sword arm pointed. Gods, he needed to be with his friends but to turn away from the sphinx at that moment would be suicide.

"I should think it is obvious," she said with a growl that wasn't quite angry. More… hungry. "I want your death."

"Obviously. Then get on with it."

It might have been a bad idea to provoke the sphinx but Nico couldn't help himself. He was frustrated, worried for Will, for his friends, and talking with the monster was about the last thing he wanted to do, especially after their last confrontation. He suspected the sphinx was more than capable of dancing verbally rings around him.

The sphinx actually laughed, a deep chuckle that seemed to vibrate the air, thrumming across the ground at Nico's feet. "I am never so coarse as to launch into action without thought."

"I'd gathered that."

"Besides, prey should be considered, turned over, studied from every angle." The sphinx paused in step, tilting her head like a curious bird. Nico was given the distinct impression of a cat playing with a mouse. Unfortunately, he suspected that he was the mouse. "To be _appreciated_ , as intelligence should be. It is why I ask my riddles."

"You ask them because you're bored?" Nico said before he could help himself.

The sphinx didn't bat an eyelid at his words, simply nodded acceptingly. "Of course. Will you serve to entertain me, son of Hades? Time is short – we wouldn't want to be interrupted, I'm sure – but I do so love riddles." Nico didn't get a chance to answer before she was leapt into her riddles once more. "Riddle me this, demigod: there is a house that one will enter blind, yet when they emerge they are seeing. What is it?"

Nico opened his mouth to speak, to say anything, but paused. Riddles? The sphinx wanted to ask him riddles because she was bored? The prospect seemed laughable, what with the tension thrumming through him, the adrenaline pumping through his veins and demanding action, the flurry of deadly activity occurring down the slope behind him with his friends – _Gods, his friends_. Nico didn't have _time_ for riddles, nor the inclination. He didn't like these sort of games at all. He almost wanted the sphinx to attack already just to get it over with – he'd likely regret thinking as such when it happened but…

Nico didn't get a chance to answer the riddle. The sphinx didn't even really seem to want it, for she continued with a second before the first was even answered. "Thirty white horses on a red hill. First they champ, then they stamp, then they stand still." She hummed in delight, tail flicking even as she paced. "Wordplay is so wonderful, is it not?"

 _Teeth_ , a voice murmured in the back of his mind. He actually knew the answer to that one – what avid lover of Tolkien wouldn't? Nico blamed Will for getting him into that, for urging him t read as just about every non-Athena-demigod resisted doing. But he didn't get a chance to speak the thought even had he felt inclined to do so, for the sphinx was continuing once more.

"What force consumes the very rocks, levels mountains and drives the clouds across the sky? Tell me this." Another hum, another flick of her tail. "Or perhaps one a little closer to your heart, son of Hades? You can neither see, nor hear, nor touch me. I lie behind stars and alter the real. I am what you fear – close your eyes and I am near."

Nico shifted in his stance, his heart thudding loudly in his chest. It was always such a way with monsters; he always found before the fight was the worst part, even more so than the aftermath when the full weight of injuries settled upon him. Nico didn't register time in a fight, was rarely exposed to the strain of having to wait for he simply didn't feel it. Except when he was before a monster, that was. A taunting monster who held the capacity to crush him in their very hand. Or paw. Or claw.

He barely even heard the riddles for the pounding in his ears. _Stupid riddles_. Nico didn't have time to listen to her, not with his friends potentially falling prey to the Hesperides. He couldn't even discern their wellbeing, if they were alright, if any of them had fallen and _oh Gods, what if one of them is hurt? What if Will's been hurt and I don't even realise?_ Nico couldn't check though. Each time he made to look over his shoulder, the sphinx seemed to creep forwards just a little more. Not quite within striking distance, but close enough to lunge across what little remained.

"You don't want my answers at all, do you?" He said. "What's the point of riddling someone when you don't wait for their answer?"

The sphinx only hummed a purr. "I need not hear your answers, son of Hades. You have already been afforded your five attempts. You have failed."

"We didn't fail, you cheated –"

"Cheat!" The sphinx reared her head with a hiss, eyes narrowing and wide smile morphing into a cruel snarl. "I do not cheat with knowledge or riddles. I _am_ knowledge."

"A little arrogant, are we?" Nico said before he could help himself.

The sphinx growled, her pacing picking up speed. "Do you know my favourite riddle, son of Hades? My favourite of all time?"

"Of course I don't," Nico scowled. He loathed rhetorical questions poised to speak with condescension.

The sphinx smirked through her snarl. "Some try to hide, some try to cheat, but time will show we'll always meet. Try as you might to guess my name, I'm sure you'll known when it's you I claim." She chuckled and it was a truly terrible sound. Nico could have sworn that even the blue lapis-lazuli embedded in her necklace glittered maliciously.

Nico didn't need to wait for her answer. He knew it already, with the surety that he knew his own name. As though the riddle spelled out the word itself. How could he not recognise Death when it was spoken of so simplistically? Nico felt coldness pool within him. The riddle seemed more a threat than a playful prodding, as a cat might prod a cornered mouse with drawn claws.

The sphinx leered with delight. "Oh, you do know this one. Of course you would. How appropriate. The son of Hades, the Lord of Darkness and Death – of course you would recognise Death when it is spoken of." The grin upon her lips, spread around curving fangs, was impossibly wide, her eyes glowing with eagerness. "You simply reek of Death, son of Hades. Did you know?"

Nico swallowed through the sudden dryness in his mouth. Not because the sphinx was scaring him – even if she was, there was something more terrifying about intelligent taunting that enraged cries of anger – but because of the truth of her words. Death _was_ Nico. Hazel had been gifted with power over the wealth of the earth, even if it had originally been unlucky, and further with a skill from Hecate herself, but Nico… Nico was of the darkness. Of shadows and fears and… and death. He _did_ reek of it because he carried it everywhere with him.

"That is what I find most curious, son of Hades," the sphinx continued, speaking with audible pleasure in her tone. It rung like a cruelly struck gong. "You seek to kill me, my siblings, even my mother, perhaps, for fear of Death itself. And yet you are already halfway there." She barked a louder laugh this time, the sound echoing across the depressed field as though rebounding off the walls of a cave. "And those around you, they are afflicted by it simply from being in your presence."

Nico flinched. He hadn't realised his hand was trembling until that moment. Maybe it hadn't been until the sphinx had said _that_. Because he knew it was true and it struck him like a spear through the chest. His friends were closer to Death simply by being around him, Nico knew. Not so much because of his affinity for it himself, which was likely what the sphinx referred to, but because of the Children. Because of the threat Echidna had bestowed him with. And it would be his fault that his friends were so affected. His fault that they were so exposed.

"It will be their end as much as it is yours," the sphinx growled, and Nico swore she sounded closer, almost in his ear. He couldn't tell, however. His eyes were trained upon her motions, caught like a rat in the hypnotic sights of a cobra. He couldn't tell if she was any closer because… because what she said was… it was only too true. Too true, he had known it, knew it even more deeply as the words rung in his ears, but…

"My mother knows, you understand," the sphinx murmured, her voice as thick as honey smothered over drowning bread. "She knows not only where you are, but of your little friends. She will end you all for what you have done."

Nico's vision momentarily blanked in a starburst of blinding terror. His worst fears – his worst fears realised. Echidna knew? She knew about his friends, about where they were? Did she know they stayed at Silverwater? Did she know exactly where they were? Had she –? Did she –? She couldn't have already –

 _Dear Gods, no, she can't have –_

Nico's mind shorted, the grip on his sword fallen to numbness. He might have even dropped it, he wasn't sure. The horror, the terror, the chant of _no, no, no_ and the string of faces, of his sister, of Percy and Annabeth, of Piper, Kayla, Austin and Thalia still at the house and _she can't have gotten them, could she?!_

"Nico!"

The voice cracked like a whip through the air. Nico wasn't even sure who it belonged. It struck him from his blindness, however, from his panic, and he blinked just in time to see the sphinx lunge. To lunge –

And a white-fletched arrow spring into existence from her chest.

The sphinx stumbled as it struck, as it _really_ struck like no weapon other than Stygian iron should be able to. The Children's skin was impregnable, Nico knew, and yet somehow the arrow had managed to penetrate. Just slightly, barely enough to hold it in, but enough to stutter the sphinx in her charge.

She stumbled only for a second, dropping to one front knee and rising so fast that Nico almost missed it. It was enough, though. Through the panic that still swamped his thoughts, the coursing adrenaline that flooded his lungs with too much air, Nico hefted his sword – his sword that he hadn't dropped because even unconsciously he wouldn't let himself drop it.

He threw himself at the monster.

* * *

A/N: For anyone interested, I know some of them are in the text but the answers to the riddles are as follows: 1. A school; 2. Teeth; 3. Time; 4. The dark; 5. Death


	18. Chapter 18 - Fearing

**Chapter 18: Fearing**

Will's mind went blank when he saw the Hesperides. Or at least it went largely blank. Instead of thoughts it was reflexes that flowed into action. Reflexes that raised his hand to his quiver and slung his bow as he skidded to a nrief stop at the top of the hill, that threw him down the decline seconds later in Reyna's wake with an arrow already fired.

He heard Orthrus at his side, the bull less unfamiliar than it had been for the occasional appearances when facing lesser monsters over the past month. He ignored it, overlooked for once the understanding that Nico was likely astride it as he was want to do on occasion to gain speed and height. Will was drawing and loosing arrows as he ran and though they didn't hit any of their foes as he would have liked for their Hesperides' speed he was satisfied to see they caused a distraction. A windmill of his bow, a lightning fast double-tap to the ground, and Will was throwing himself into the fight with his bronze-tipped quarterstaff.

They were six against four, Will knew for certain in his head, but he hardly saw his allies. It was with single-minded focus that he spun his staff, launching himself towards one of the Hesperides as she attacked Leo. That girl, only a girl she would seem, who looked at least six years his junior, was incredibly fast. Fast and vicious. She seemed to sense Will's approach even before he was upon her, spinning from Leo at the last second to catch Will's staff in a pair of double crossed knives. Her face, probably beautiful at any other time but for the disconcerting black of her eyes, was twisted into an ugly a snarl of anger, hatred spelled out like sweat streaking her face. She heaved her knives with a growl, flinging Will's staff to the side, and then was upon him.

The Hesperides moved almost like one creature, Will quickly realised. He struck and spun, dodged and jabbed at the girl before him, but within seconds she was gone, disappeared as if vanished. Will didn't have a chance to discern _where_ she'd gone, for an instant later he caught sight of another nymph from the corner of his eye, wielding a doru straight for him. She swung the overlong spear-like weapon almost like a scythe and in seconds Will had fallen into fierce fighting once more, ducking and twisting away from the sharp-edged sauroter at the end of the spin as often as he struck a returning blow.

And then that nymph was replaced by another, wielding a short sword, and then he fell to the distraction of another with a different, wider gladius. He almost couldn't keep track of them for the speed with which they moved, snarling and leaping through the snow in – bare feet, they had _bare feet_ and didn't even seem to care.

Will lost himself in the frantic rhythm of fighting, even as his mind struggled to catch up. He couldn't even see his friends half of the time for the speed of the action, dizzying him with the flurry of weapons, the appearing and disappearing Hesperides in their billowing white chitons. He ducked beneath Reyna's spear as she sought to jab it at the nymph before him with a lunge over his head, before leaping to her defence as she loosed a cry of pain when the dagger-wielding nymph sprung from behind and sliced at her shoulder. He swung himself briefly onto Orthrus' back – Nico had left the bull, where had he gone? – and charged across the field before throwing himself to the ground in a roll to catch one of the nymphs with a blow before she could slip her sword beneath Calypso's.

Ducking, weaving, jumping and leaping, they were all torn between the mad battle of attack and defence. Jason was in the air as much as he was on foot, Leo using the fire that sprung from his hands more than his actual weapon, and Nico… Will couldn't even see Nico but he must have been there somewhere. Diving between the shadows? Will wasn't sure.

He received a thrust to his gut that would have done more than bruise if not for the leather cuirass he wore beneath his jacket. He saw Leo go down in a burst of flame, only for Jason to dive to his aid, momentarily drawing him airborne before they launched themselves back into the midst of the fighting. For only ten of them – eleven including Orthrus who ploughed through the Hesperides like the rampant bull that he was – Will found it difficult to focus on any one in particular for the confusion that drew forth. He saw Calypso stagger beneath a blow from the doru-wielder but she scrambled to her senses and struck right back at the nymph. He saw Reyna too stagger as another blow was struck to her already damaged shoulder. He sprung to her aid once more.

And then the pace abruptly shifted, because the doru-wielding nymph burst into dust to beginning of a shriek that bespoke a cry of enraged farewell.

Will wasn't sure which one of them had vanquished her, but from the melted ring of fire turning the golden dust to ash he suspected it was Leo. He was abruptly certain when he caught a glimpse of Leo's face over his shoulder, sweaty and streaked with grime that looked too thin and dark to be blood and grinning triumphantly before leaping for another of the Hesperides in combat with Calypso.

The remaining nymphs paused briefly at the disappearance of their sister. Paused, and then seemed to rear in heightened anger. Will swore he could feel the heat of their rage beaming from them as he fought the dagger-nymph alongside Jason. Only for seconds, however, before Jason managed a sly strike from on high, a slash to the back of the neck that likely would have spurted blood in a river across the ground had the nymph not immediately dissolved into dust.

It became abruptly and logically clear that less opponents the easier the collective force of the remaining nymphs was to defeat. It was sort of like the hydra, Will perceived, only when the heads were chopped off they didn't regrow with double their number. It became even more clear for the speed at which the end of the fight arrived.

Orthrus caught one of the two remaining nymphs between his horns, tossing and bucking as she loosed a scream of pain and hate-filled anger. Only to be cut off by Calypso's dagger as she flung it towards the nymph who, failing to twist out of the way in time, crumbled to dust a second after the weapon struck. It left just the one.

They surrounded her. Will was gasping for breath, his chest heaving and the bruises and scrapes – Gods his stomach was aching after the blow of that doru – making themselves known in the brief respite. He wasn't alone, he saw, for the first time making out all of his friends at once as they surrounded the nymph and cut off her exits. Reyna was hunched beneath the injury to her shoulder and Leo's flames were sparking as though short-circuiting but he maintained his upright stance. Jason hung suspended just a foot from the ground with sword pointed towards the lone Hesperides, panting heavily, and Calypso wiped at a dribble of blood dripping down her chin from a long gash across her cheek. And Nico…

Nico was nowhere to be seen. Orthrus stood across the circle from Will, stationed directly on the other side of the nymph with hoof counting in step as if in agitation in time with the tossing of his horned head. But no Nico. Will spared a wide-eyed glance around himself in rising panic. He couldn't have been felled, could he? But across the expanse of the football field ditch was not even the hint of a felled figure.

His attention was drawn unwillingly back to the nymph as she uttered a low growl. Her sword was raised and though hatred still beamed from her face there was a cruel snarl curling her lips in a twisted version of a smile. She raked her gaze around their circle of them, eyes narrowed. "You disgust me."

"That's okay," Leo said, sniffing and shrugging as though the insult were nothing but a childish taunt. Which, really, it was. "You disgust us too."

"You killed our Ladon. You have taken my sisters from me." She growled again before physically spitting on the ground. "You all deserve to die. _Him_ most of all. If that's all that will come of this fight, then I will withdraw happily."

Her head nodded over Will's shoulder as though pointing with her chin, and Will couldn't help himself. His gaze was drawn like a moth to flame and he saw Nico.

He was standing atop the hill in the direction they'd come. His back was to them, but Will could make out his sword still in hand. It was lowered, though, as though forgotten, even though right before him, creeping forward, closer, closer, as her mouth uttered inaudible words –

"Nico!"

Will was shouting, was moving before he was even aware of what he was doing. His staff slammed twice to the ground, the _twang_ of his bowstring erupted in a split second. His hand grasped for an arrow even knowing, _knowing_ that it would do nothing because his arrows _did nothing_ to the Children but provide a distraction, and then he was loosing his shot.

The shot fired. It flew straight and trained unwaveringly, white fletching like the tail of a bird zipping through the air. Then it struck and sunk into tawny flesh.

The sphinx loosed a roar of what could only be as much pain and anger as that of the nymph behind Will who he could only assume one of his friends had attacked. He didn't look to check. He didn't even have the headspace to consider the how, the _how_ that arrow had pierced the sphinx's flesh when none others did. His feet were already running, throwing himself over the distance between he and Nico as though his life depended on it.

Because it did.

He heard Jason following, flying at full speed. He heard someone else right behind him but didn't glance over his shoulder to check who it was. He had eyes only for Nico, who was facing the sphinx alone, who, as though shaken from a stupor by the sphinx's roar, raised his sword and threw himself into retaliation.

 _No, you idiot! Don't attack, just run! Wait!_ The thought screamed in Will's mind but he didn't have the breath to utter it, every gasp of his already heavy pants spared for his forward flight as he tore up the hill. He crested the ascent just as Nico struck.

And as he watched, Nico struck again. Not for the first time, it would seem, but for perhaps the fourth, the fifth, the sixth. He was a whirlwind of shadow, of leaping limbs, flashing sword and jabbing thrusts. And in spite of himself, in spite of the voice that screamed in his ear to _Hurry! Help him! Don't leave him to it alone!_ Will could only stare as he ran, as he crested the incline. His feet slowed to a stop as he stared in stunned incredulity at the battle that was being fought before him.

No, not a battle. An execution.

Something had been triggered inside Nico. Something had sparked his vengeful rage, that threw him into a visible cloud of Death itself. It was something that Will had never seen before but that he somehow recognised anyway. Nico was furious, murderous, and for once it wasn't determination and resignation that drove him to attack, to seek an end to the monster with the permanency that it so required. He was driven in an entirely different kind of way and it was purely terrifying to behold. Even had Will been able to strike at the sphinx, had been actually able to insert himself between the blows to injure it, he doubted he would have had the chance.

Nico's feet didn't touch the ground. He leapt and spun, twisted and stabbed and slashed, but it was between leaps into shadow. One instance he was there, above the sphinx and slicing, the next he'd disappeared into shadow. A second later he'd reappeared on the other side of the sphinx, erupting from a curtain of shadows in the air as if diving through a window to hack and swipe once more before disappearing. The sphinx twisted at each hit, swiped with her claws and grasping paws. She lunged with her mouth flared wide and teeth bared, twisting and hissing, growling and roaring with pain and anger, but always too slow. Slices and gold-tinged gouges seemed to appear across her pelt as though erupting from thin air, tufts of her mane of hair scattering as she twisted and bursts of blood seemed to spurt like water from a bubbler.

It was incredible. It was terrifying.

The sphinx wasn't a fighter, than much was evident. Intelligent she was, Will knew, but not the warrior that her siblings were. For all of her size, her strength apparent from the trembling pounding of her feet as she spun and twisted, she didn't even land a blow on Nico that Will saw. Not that he could really blame her. Nico was little more than a shadow of movement, barely in one place for long enough to strike a blow before he disappeared and reappeared in another swirl of darkness. Will, frozen in step, had barely managed to shake himself from his stunned, wide-eyed immobility when Nico struck. He struck hard, fast, and final.

It was at the top of the spine, just as he and Hazel always targeted. A hard, downward thrust at the junction between head and neck. It was the longest Will had seen Nico pause since he'd thrown himself into the attack, and pause he did atop the sphinx's shoulders, long and still and immobilised in the act of plunging his sword downward.

The sphinx, caught in mid twist, paw raised, lurched under the stab. A low, rumbling groan spewed from her mouth, her jaw hanging open and eyes bulging wide. Her cheeks were a mess of blood, a head wound received but seconds before spilling over her tawny skin. She stumbled as Nico shifted, seeming to thrust his sword deeper until nothing but the hilt remained. Will was almost surprised he didn't see it protruding from the other side of the sphinx's neck.

And that was it. The sphinx had lost, and that was it. With a visible shudder, a choking sound, her face twisted and then dissolved. In a shower of dust, she crumpled before Will's eyes, the solidity of her form lost to dust. Nico, crouched astride her shoulders, fell the short distance to the ground and to his knees through the haze of golden cloud. There was a thudding sound, a slight tinkling like metal sliding over metal, but Will barely acknowledged it. He was already running forwards once more, his heart still trying to climb from his mouth and fear erased none for the display of fighting strength, the victory, the vanquishing of the monster. He fell to his own knees beside Nico in an instant.

He looked terrible. Not only for the apparent dizziness that Will now knew afflicted him whenever he fought a monster, whenever he killed with the Stygian sword, but… more. Nico's face was pale in an entirely new way, touched with greyness that was almost greenly nauseous, and though his eyes were blown wide with something like fear, there was a persisting rage that swum within them, dilating his pupils wide. He was panting from his fight, but Will suspected that the bodily trembles that coursed through him were for something else entirely.

Reaching forwards, Will didn't pause even for Nico's flinch to drawn him into an embrace. He needed to. Even if only briefly, the sight of Nico facing off against the sphinx, the image of him fighting her, even as powerfully and single-mindedly and obviously assured of victory as the performance had been, he needed to feel him. To touch him. To know he was safe because _Gods_ there was nothing quite like… nothing so terrifying as…

"Will," Nico muttered, his voice wavering and muffled as Will pressed his face to his shoulder. "Will, you –"

"You idiot. You fucking idiot. Facing off against the sphinx all by yourself, with no one there for support?" It didn't matter in the slightest that Nico had defeated the monster almost with ease. It didn't matter at all – or at least, it didn't _now._ "You could have died. You absolute fucking idiot, you could have –"

" _Will_."

It was only with the redoubled demand that Will realised Nico was pushing against him. No, that he was struggling to pull loose of Will's embrace. Through the grogginess of his thoughts, the desperation, the need to touch Nico and know he was alright – just for a second, that disregard hurt. But even that hurt faded when Nico tugged himself loose, only to grasp Will's shoulders with both hands. "We need to go. We need to go now."

"What?"

" _Now,_ we need to go back to Silverwater, we have to go _now_ before it's too late or –"

"What are you talking about?"

Will heard Reyna approach from behind him, the slight stagger of her step suggesting that the end to the fight was as exhausting for her as it was for the rest of them. He spared a brief over his shoulder towards her. She was still breathing heavily, and as he turned he saw her swing her spear onto her shoulder. Only to wince when it evidently aggravated her newly acquired injury and lower it once more. "What happened? Why do we need to go now?"

Nico was pushing himself to his feet, using Will to clamber upright before hauling Will to his own feet after him. His eyes were still blown wide, he was still trembling and there was a tightness of his features that bespoke deep worry if not fear through his residual anger. He glanced to Reyna briefly before bending over sharply to scoop up his sword. "The sphinx told me," he said, sheathing his sword over his shoulder as he spoke. "Echidna's knows."

"Knows what?" Calypso asked, approaching with a weary step of her own. Leo and Jason followed at her side, sheathing and lowering their weapons respectively. Each stared at Nico with something approaching awe, and just a little intimidation.

Nico didn't seem to notice any of them but to note that they were there _._ When he spoke it was so fast and jumbled that Will almost couldn't understand him. "Echidna. She knows where we're staying. She knows we're at Silverwater, she knows _everyone's there, she knows_ , _sheknowsaboutus_ –"

"Nico, hey, _Nico_." Will grasped his shoulders, bodily spinning him around and giving him a slight shake. Nico blinked for a moment, as though startled, as though confused, and turned his gaze to Will. There was real fear in his gaze rapidly overwhelming the burning fury that Will had only glimpsed in the brief seconds of his fight against the sphinx. He squeezed Nico's shoulder in feeble comfort. "Slow down. What are you talking about? I can't understand what you're saying."

He coached Nico to breathe, more concerned than he let himself show. Nico wasn't one to let himself appear panicked. He didn't fall prey to hyperventilation, nor to such anxious attacks, and it was disconcerting to see when Nico, even when in sadness or fear, had always somehow managed to appear vaguely calm and controlled. His anger was icy, chilling. He didn't panic.

It was a struggle but slowly Nico regained control of himself. His hands grasped onto Will's arms, finally giving up the struggle to wrench himself free, which was a benefit to them both because it had been a futile struggle anyway. Nico was certainly more than capable of pulling himself from Will's grasp when he was in a stable mindset – on more than one occasion Will had found himself face down on the floor with Nico kneeling on his back to hold him down – but not now. He wasn't stable at all. He was _freaking out._

Gradually, he calmed, or at least he became less hysterical. When he finally steadied himself, Nico met Will's eyes with hard determination that almost managed to mask his roiling fear. "Echidna. The sphinx. She told me that she'd told Echidna where we were. That Echidna knows about you, about all of you." He gestured towards their friends over Will's shoulder with a tip of his head. "We have to leave, to go back _now_ , before she gets there."

"Wait, wait, wait," Jason said, stepping up to Will's side. There was a frown upon his brow, serious and faintly angered, but his face had paled at Nico's words. "She's risen? You know that she's – that she's managed to climb from Tartarus?" His voice was deep, coloured with his own abruptly rising fear.

Nico glanced towards him and hesitated. With a jerking motion he shook his head. "I don't know. I don't know if she's managed it yet, but the sphinx –"

"We don't know yet, Nico." Will had to fight against his own rapidly growing concern. It was a fierce struggle. "If the sphinx didn't say anything specifically then she could have just been trying to scare you."

Nico turned back towards him, dark eyes wide. "You don't know that either."

"We don't know anything," Calypso said, stepping up to Will's other shoulder. There was worry in her tone but she was clearly attempting to keep a hold of it. "We don't even know if the sphinx was telling the truth."

"But she could have been. She could have been telling the truth, and Echidna could be on her way –"

"Nico, _calm_." Will dropped his voice low, striving for the soothing tone he used with panicked patients at times. The glare it elicited from Nico, indicating he knew exactly what Will was doing, was worth the attempt. At least that resembled his normal expression; anything was better than that violent fury or the utter panic that he had worn moments before. "It isn't going to do any good to speculate and panic."

"I'm not panicking –"

"You're panicking," Will pressed. "And that would be exactly what the sphinx would want you to do."

It was a relief when Nico's glare only intensified. "Oh, and you'd know what she was thinking so well, would you?"

"The sphinx is supposed to be smart, right?" Leo said, skirting around their little group to Nico's side. He bumped his shoulder into Nico's, which only served to turn The Glare upon him instead. "She was probably trying to trick you, to unnerve you or whatever."

"You don't know that –"

"But she could have been," Reyna said, adding her own efforts to the spontaneous Calm Nico Down therapy session. Will felt an upwelling of gratitude for his friends that, despite their own worries, they combined forces in order to allay Nico's fears. Nico, who was even then swaying on his feet slightly in the aftermath of killing the sphinx. Will met Reyna's eye with a sidelong glance. He could swear that, in that instant at least, they knew one another's thoughts: _If it really is that bad, if something really has happened, we'll deal with it. In a little bit. After we deal with_ this _situation._

Reyna nodded slightly as she continued "The sphinx is – _was_ reputedly one of the most intelligent of the monsters. It's why she riddled in the first place, right. And she targeted the fears of her foes with her words, almost as though she knew them exactly." Reyna nodded her head once more as though agreeing with herself. "It would make sense that she'd try to frighten you, to unnerve you."

Nico glanced around at their party, meeting each of their eyes with a glare of his own before settling his gaze upon Will. "We still have to leave. Now."

Will nodded. "We will, yes. In a minute." Then, before Nico could argue, he finally released his grasp upon his shoulders and rummaged around in the inside pocket of his jacket. A moment later he drew forth his packet of ambrosia and, to Nico grumble and rolled eyes, began to hand out cubes to each of his friends. They accepted them gratefully with murmurs of thanks, even Nico after Will physically prodded him in the cheek with a piece. Not without a scowl, of course, but eventually obligingly.

Chewing on his own piece of sweet tanginess and keeping an eye on Nico as he strode towards Orthrus to dismantle him back into an armband, Will turned towards the scene of the sphinx's death. To the dust that coated the ground. To… what looked like a heavily-chained necklace crumpled upon the ground beside Will's arrow. The arrow that he'd fired, that he'd somehow pierced the sphinx with.

As his friends eased themselves into crouches and lowered themselves onto their knees in brief rest, as Jason turned to Reyna to take a look at her shoulder and Leo towards Calypso murmuring something about his fire with an upraised hand, Will made his way towards the arrow and necklace. He crouched down, tentatively picking up the arrow.

It was a white arrow, one of the arrows that Reyna had made with the soft fletching and the Colchian Dragon-tooth head. Will had seen the white fletching, registered it only briefly, but he had definitely seen it. That arrow had somehow managed to pierce the sphinx's body. How did that happen? Nothing but Stygian iron could pierce the impregnable flesh of one of the Children – except that the arrow had. Because it was part of the Colchian Dragon? Was that it?

Will fingered the sharp point of the arrowhead thoughtfully. This was certainly something to consider. If the arrows could pierce the flesh of the Children, potentially of Echidna, then he wasn't so useless to Nico in a fight after all. He wasn't so incapable. Will didn't know if the arrow would be able to permanently vanquish one of the monsters, and he sincerely doubted it – it would be almost too much to hope for – but even so, if he could do something… The hydra arrows that Kayla used, while they couldn't quite penetrate the hide of the monsters, had caused noticeable damage for the sharpness of their tips and the constant sheen of self-propagating acid. Maybe the Colchian Dragon-tooth arrows were the same? Maybe even better?

Tucking the thought aside for further consideration as he slipped the arrow back into his quiver, Will turned instead to the necklace that lay like a shiny, crumpled snake upon the mess of muddy snow. It wasn't a very pretty piece, without a clasp and with the links of the chain of heavy, polished golden. Each link was nearly as big as bracelets itself. Hanging from the largest link was a gold-inset jewel of vivid blue flecked with pieces of greenish gold. Lapis lazuli, Will recalled from somewhere, picking up the chain gingerly and looping it around his wrist. And the necklace was probably –

"The spoils of war," Nico said from behind him. "I saw the sphinx wearing it around her neck last time we saw her. I don't know what it does or why she wore it but if that's the only thing left over then that's what it probably is."

Turning, Will was halfway through a shrug before his eyes settled upon Nico. He opened his mouth to speak, to reply, but in an instant was overwhelmed by… something. Some voice, disjointed, projected voice spoken not into his ear but very definitely his mind. It took a moment of staring, of staring at Nico, to realise that it was _Nico's_ voice.

 _Can't lose, can't lose them, not them… can't die, couldn't let them die, no one, none of them… can't let them die, can't lose any of them, impossible,_ never _…_

Will blinked, feeling his mouth sag open as the words trickled through his mind on frantic repeat. He was captured, captivated, and as much by the tone as by the words themselves. It was heartbroken, hysterical, a voice that Will had never heard Nico speak in before. Was it… was it his thoughts? Could Will hear what he was thinking? Nico's mouth wasn't moving, but it was his voice and…

Nico was frowning down at him. "What?" He said, slowly folding his arms across his chest. He was calmer now, thankfully, and though Will swore he was paler than he had been before the fight he otherwise appeared largely normal, the ambrosia already working its magic. Even his voice was returned to flat normality, his tone one so vast difference to that which played through Will's mind.

Before Will could collect himself enough reply, to think through the buzz of hysterical words playing through his mind, Reyna stepped up to Nico's side. "Are you alright now, _hermanito_? You didn't get hurt at all, did you?"

Nico shook his head and said something in reply, but it was something that Will didn't hear because as he glanced towards Reyna, Nico's hysterical voice faded to be replaced by another. By Reyna's voice, and it was a voice that Reyna had surely never spoken in. It was lower than usual, and yet trembled so fiercely that he could barely make out the words. _All alone… nothing left and all alone… I can't be alone, must have someone,_ anyone _, must remain fast… don't let them see, but I can't, I can't be alone, I need them, all of them…_

Will glanced between the two of them, feeling like he was seeing double. Double and opposites of Nico and Reyna as they conversed with relative ease, with almost calm, Nico reassuring Reyna that he _was_ fine and that if there was anyone she should be concerned about it was herself. As his gaze switched between them, Nico's hysterical tones flooding into his mind were replaced by the warbles of Reyna's and then back again in such jarring contrast that it nearly deafened Will entirely. Those voices – what were they? Where did they come from? Was he really reading their thoughts? Their panicked, terrified thoughts that held such a deep and pained ache that it put Will in mind of a fundamental schema rather that a superficial passing thought. Was it…?

His gaze dropped to the necklace in his hands and abruptly Reyna's and Nico's voices faded. Will blinked. Was that it? Was he hearing their voices because of the necklace? It could have been his imagination, but he swore the lapis lazuli gem glowed slightly. Was it some sort of magic of the necklace, to read thoughts? But what thoughts? What were they? Surely not _their_ thoughts, for Will didn't think it possible that Nico and Reyna could continue to hold such a mild conversation while thinking like _that._ It wouldn't be possible.

He was shaken from his frowning musing by Jason's arrival at Reyna's side and, before he could catch himself, Will lifted his gaze towards him. He was immediately assaulted by a sobbing, desperate voice that he swore he had never heard from Jason before. _Strong enough, I have to be strong enough… protect, I must protect, be strong, stronger, always… scared, so scared that I won't be enough, to save, to help, to heal…_

Abruptly Will dropped the necklace to the ground. He felt repulsed, as though he'd been listening to something that he shouldn't have. As though he'd been eavesdropping upon precious thoughts that no one should be a party to. Slowly, tentative understanding dawned. Scared. Jason was scared about something – about not being strong enough, about not being able to protect… someone. Or some _ones_. Was that what it was? Did the necklace leech not just thoughts from those around it but fears? He glanced towards Nico, to Reyna, to Jason as they exchanged words that he couldn't even really hear for the pounding in his head. Nico's hysterical voice, torn with fear for _someone_ dying. Reyna's, low and trembling, scared of, what, being alone? And Jason, in some misconceived sense of his limited strength, fearing that he wouldn't be strong enough to protect.

Fears. Yes, Will could very much see that they could be the fears of his friends. He felt even more repulsed that he'd actually heard the thoughts, the feelings, the schema's or whatever they were. He shouldn't have listened. He shouldn't have been made to listen. He turned a glare down at the necklace, fingers twitching to smack it away from himself.

"Will? Earth to Will, are you still with us?"

Glancing up from his glaring focus, Will turned towards Leo who was half bent over him and waving in his face. Leo abruptly drew back at he fell beneath Will's distracted glare. "Oi, hey, what the hell, man? You bout to bite my head off or something?"

Will immediately blinked aside the disgust for his realisation and smoothed his expression. He forced one of innocent confusion onto his face instead. "What? What are you talking about?"

Leo eyed him uneasily for a moment before shaking his head. "It's creepy the way you do that, you know."

"Do what?"

"Switch off your expression like that." Leo glanced to Nico over his shoulder. "Is he always like that?"

Nico was frowning slightly at Will, thoughtful, maybe a little worried though he hid it well. He turned slowly towards Leo and gave him a one-shouldered shrug. "What can I say? I've been telling you he's weird for over ten years." Then he stepped forwards and crouched down beside Will. Before Will could give warning, he snatched the necklace from the snow in which Will had dropped it and rose to standing once more. Only to pause as though frozen with his attention fixed upon Will.

Only for a second though, before he seemed to shunt his temporary immobility aside and very deliberately placed the necklace in his pocket. "We'll deal with this later, I think."

It was a casual comment, but Will heard the promise within it. The promise directed to him, as though warning Will that they would talk about… about _it_.

He didn't get a chance to question Nico, however. He didn't get a chance to say anything before Nico was urging everyone to their feet and locking hands with him, Calypso on his other side. He barely even had a chance to assure himself that Nico would be alright with shadow-travel – which "Of course" he was – before they were dragged into the darkness.

Still, Will had to wonder what Nico had seen. What he had heard in a voice thickened by Will's pain and fear. He wondered if he really wanted to know.

* * *

Shock. And…

Horror.

Will stared wide-eyed at the remains of the cabin, for remains they were. Only remains. Where once had stood a little holiday hut of log walls, cheery square windows radiating warm light and a pointed little roof with awning hanging just a little lower than the walls like a cap tipped over the eyes, there now stood wreckage.

The walls were shattered. All of them, splintered to pieces. Not a single one was left standing, not a frame of windowed glass left unbroken and strewn across the ground. Little could be seen of the interior, the roof collapsed upon itself and crumpling to the floor below. It looked like the scene of a disaster.

Which it was.

Will was stumbling forwards, barely even realising that his friends were doing the same. Barely seconds before, Nico had shadow-travelled them to the scene, directly to the front garden of the little cabin. Will had been on the verge of turning to him to ask if he was okay, to grab him if he wasn't and to urge him to immediately find somewhere to sit even if he was. Those words had died upon his lips upon seeing the wreckage that stood before them.

Jason was running. Or he was the first to start running. Will thought there was maybe a little bit of flying involved such was his speed in bounding over the broken walls and crumpled plaster, barely making a sound but for the crunching of his footsteps. Until he bellowed a hoarse cry. "Piper! Piper, are you -? Percy! Annabeth! Is anyone -? Piper!"

It was a mournful pained wail unlike any Will had heard before yet jarringly similar to the unspoken words he'd witnessed when he held the necklace. When he'd looked at Jason and heard his 'fear'. Jason was terrified. He wasn't the only one.

Will immediately followed after him, scrambling over the rubble and shoving over every half-broken board of wall that could possibly have hidden a survivor or – or a not-survivor. At his side he saw Nico doing the same, moving with such speed and kicking aside fragments with such force that he sounded like a bulldozer ploughing through the mess. Behind them, Leo and Calypso were calling just as Jason was, working together to heave aside a solid square of roofing to reveal what remained of the kitchen beneath. Reyna stood in the middle of it all, turning slowly with face sagging in an expression of horror.

Throwing his shoulder into a thick wedge of plaster, Will tumbled over a section of wall, causing it to split and shatter against the ground in a puff of dust eerily similar to that of a vanquished monster. The couch revealed beneath was empty, the dark cushions powdered in white but bare of any huddling bodies. Will didn't know whether to be relieved of disheartened by that fact.

"Piper! Where are – Hazel? Frank?! Can anyone –?" Will glanced over his shoulder at Jason, who really was flying now, swooping over the wreckage like a darting hummingbird for the speed of his movements. He would descend, heft a piece of timber or a sheet of split wall, glance beneath and quickly drop it before leaping into the air once more to begin calling. It was horrifying to witness, even if all Will could have made out was the sound of his cries.

Letting another section of wall drop to the floor from his own hands, Will turned slowly towards Nico. Nico had already slowed in his bulldozing to stand in rigid stillness barely ten feet away. As though Will had spoken to draw his attention, he turned slowly towards him. The expression on his face was ghostly white, eyes so wide they seemed to consume half his face. Will barely had the thought to wonder if he looked any better.

"They're not…"

Nico nodded his head jerkily. "They're not here," he finished with a croak. Will wasn't sure if there was relief or fear more thickly lathering his words. "They must have –"

"They must have escaped." Glancing over his shoulder, Will watched Reyna step up behind them. Her lips were thin, face so tight that lines appeared around her eyes and mouth. She seemed to be struggling to control her own fear. "They must have. If they're not here, they must have –"

"Or they're being chased." Jason landed in a heavy thump beside them. His eyes were blown wide behind his glasses, cheeks flushed as though angry but without a trace of that anger in his expression. Panicked would have been a more apt description. Panicked and twitching, apparently unable to hold still even for a second. He turned, glanced over his shoulder, glanced _upwards_ for some reason, then jerked once more and glanced the other way. Will had never seen him like that before. Jason, the steady, stoic, strong Jason, looked on the verge of hysteria. It was a common theme that morning. "Whoever it was must have attacked the cabin and chased them."

"Echidna," Nico said immediately. "It must have been her. Even the Caucasian Eagle couldn't have done this much damage against seven demigods."

Will glanced towards him. He didn't know what he'd expected to hear – accusation? Resentment that they'd all attempted to discourage him from his fears, to assure him that Echidna _couldn't_ have arisen yet and made him wait? There was none of that. There was not a hint of accusation or resentment, nothing but fear and… determination?

 _How does he do that?_ Will marvelled, even as he felt his own fear rapidly rising. Fear for his friends, of Echidna, of… of _all_ of it. _How does he become so focused so quickly?_

Will didn't have time to ask. He doubted he would have been able to find the right words to ask anyway. A second after Nico spoke, there was a cry from across the remains of the log cabin, a cry of discovery that had he, Nico, Reyna and Jason all racing and bounding over the wreckage to Leo and Calypso's side. Will slowed to a stop as he pulled up short beside them, turned towards the tree line that stretched unbroken before them and served as the fringes of the national park. Or at least it was unbroken but for a very distinctive path leading from the cabin-side. It was as wide as a truck-lane and so obvious that Will wondered that he hadn't seen it as soon as they'd arrived.

Calypso turned towards them, her face set with a hard determination reminiscent of that which had spread across Nico's. "I think they did escape."

"Yeah, escape and were followed," Leo nodded. There were sparks dancing across his fisted knuckles with the desire to burst into flame.

Reyna strode towards the nearest scarred tree, one of those that lined the truck-lane but hadn't been torn down and mashed to a pulp. She touched the bark gently, with keen thoughtfulness, prodding for a moment and crumbling a piece between her fingers before glancing back to their collective party. "It hasn't been long that they've passed through. I'd say maybe five, ten minutes."

"So we just missed then," Jason said. His fear was still palpable, but at least he wasn't twitching quite so much anymore. The focus that was gradually seeping through them all, that Will could feel welling within himself at having found a target, at finding evidence, seemed to if not dampen their fear then at least tether it. He was almost itching to leap forwards into the forest, to charge along the path of destruction with bow drawn. To fly to the aid of his friends.

"How do you even know that?" Leo asked, shaking a wrist as though to free his hand of sparks, but his words sounded more a rhetorical question. Reyna, silent, seemed to take it as such.

Nico was already stepping forwards. Without pause for discussion, he stepped forwards and continued stepping until he was striding, then breaking into a run, a fluid, bounding run that barely left an indentation of his footprints in the mess of mud and timber splinters he stepped over. Will didn't even remember thinking to follow but found himself keeping pace alongside him. Found himself running between Nico and Jason, their pace rapidly falling from loping strides into tearing lengths. A galloping charge down the laneway into the forest in pursuit of their friends, of the monsters.

Necessity dictated that fear was left behind in their wake.


	19. Chapter 19 - Battling

**Chapter 19: Battling**

Nico heard them before he saw them. The sound of a cry, followed by an explosive _BOOM!_ only drove him to run faster still.

Ten minutes they'd been running. A full ten minutes of sprinting that left he and his friends panting and gasping but thrumming with tangible determination. Nico was desperately fearful for his friends, but that terror was nearly smothered by the sore and desperate need to _do something_. Demigods were always like that. Action soothed agitation and in this instance agitation would otherwise have been strumming Nico's nerves into a frenzy.

Bursting through the trees at a particularly loud cry, Nico and those with him spilled into a clearing beside what looked like it might have once been a building but had long ago fallen to ruin. The ruins itself, dragged kicking and screaming from its neglect, was already a victim of the fight that raged around it. Nico could make out the still-crumbling stones dribbling from gaping holes. Only for a second, however, before his attention was drawn to the fight.

The fight.

It was a battle. Somehow, even with only seven to their side, that was what it was. The demigods – Percy and Annabeth, Hazel and Frank, Austin, Kayla, Thalia – were struggling to remain within sight of one another but failing as the tide of monsters slithered between them, tore at them from above, shoved them from the support of their fellows. Nico saw the eagles, soaring and screeching overhead, the coppery metallic wings of the offspring and the fiery, reflective bronze of the Caucasian eagle that dwarfed its children in both size and the shadow it flung beneath it. Below swarmed a sea of half-woman half snake dracanae. They writhed and crawled over one another as they charged at the demigods, their serpentine bodies in place of legs lunging them forwards with frightening speed. They were smaller than humans, the size of children if Nico was to make a comparison, but the connotations of such a size, the beauty of the female heads wreathed in crowns of shimmering scales and pale yellow skin, was lost beneath their monstrous expressions.

They were angry, that much was apparent from the snarls and roars emitted from drawn lips. They were aggressive, that too evidenced by the spears and swords held aloft and jabbing at their siblings, their sisters, as much as at the demigods.

And they were overwhelming. In sheer number, Nico would guess that there were at least a hundred, maybe more. Probably more, and others still appearing from between the trees, sliding with darting speed across the snow and leaving rippling trails in their snow of their passage. They were everywhere. And behind them all…

Echidna had coiled herself like a tree python around a giant sugar maple. Even enormous as the tree was, she made it seem barely a sapling in comparison to her size. Bodily coils as thick as the tree, easily as big as Ladon had been, seemed to squeeze the very life from the trunk. Nico could swear that even across the distance of a hundred feet he could hear the tree groan.

She watched the battle below, observed her children be vanquished by the blades of the demigods and inflicting only minor injuries in retaliation. She watched with a smile that was almost a scowl that settled upon lips painted dark green. No, not painted, Nico realised. They were scaled. She was beautiful, her upper womanly half breathtaking with skin bared and glowing a greenish yellow, streaked in scales that added a shimmer to her flesh. Her dark hair tumbled like serpents around her shoulders and wide golden eyes flickered across the scene before her watching, searching.

Beautiful she may have been, but Nico swore he had never seen a creature so repulsive in his life.

He took in the entirety of the scene in bare seconds. Took it in even as he slowed not a pause to catch his breath, tired as he was from the shadow-travel, from fighting the sphinx, even from running. Those around him didn't pause for a second either. They couldn't afford to.

Drawing his sword with one hand and grasping at the armband of Orthrus with the other – it would be tiring to keep him animated for any length of time but they needed the help – Nico charged into the fray. A dive into the shadow ate the distance between himself and the nearest dracanae in a split second. His sword sliced through the scaled skin of the child-snake as the sound of the battle fell upon his ears.

* * *

Will managed to loose three shots into dracanae midst in the time that it took him to charge into the frenzy. Three monsters fell to dust as, for once, he managed to fire with perfect accuracy. He barely even noticed, however, for the need to focus, to swing his bow, strike it into a quarterstaff and parry a descending sword from a half-girl-half-snake monster was more than a little distracting.

The first monster crunched beneath the force of his swing in seconds.

Will lost himself into the battle. He didn't know what he was hoping for, what he was seeking to achieve or how they would win. He only knew that he had to fight, that he had to defeat the monsters, to help his friends, and he had to do it _now_. He felt Leo and Reyna on either side of him as they fell to the attack, sword and spear dancing respectively. He caught a glimpse of Jason soar through the air like an avenging angel and crash into a swarm of dracanae. Only briefly, however, before Will lost himself to dodging a swinging sword, ducking a thrusting spear and striking with his quarterstaff with full force.

Heart pounding as much from adrenaline as fear, Will caught glimpses of those around him, as he always did in battles. Brief snapshots of his surroundings, sandwiched between the snarling faces of child-like snake-girls as they gnashed their fanged teeth and scrambled to the attack. A lunge of a striking sword and then he caught sight of Annabeth as she wrenched her bone sword from the ground, the sight of her blurred behind a film of falling dust. Will spun his staff in a twirling windmill a second before he glimpsed Thalia leaping from a tree like a monkey with bow drawn and arrows soaring, a determined set to her youthful face. For a second he was back-to-back with Percy as they defended against a ringing tide of what Will could only guess were Echidna's miniature clones, and then they were separated by a wall of dracanae spewing between them. A giant eagle the colour of tarnished copper was wrenched from the air mid-swoop by a giant of a bear than Will could only presume was Frank. Orthrus, stumbling with all the lack of coordination of a skeleton in snow, ploughed through the masses of clones with horned head tossing and a sea of equally stumbling skeleton warriors rising in his wake. Nico's warriors fought as fiercely as they always did, even as the dracanae turned upon them with hissing shrieks and pulverised them back to the shattered remains from whence they'd come.

A bursting stream of colourful gems targeting another swooping eagle from Hazel, the cloud of illusionary Mist masking her passage as she struck and fought her way through the tide of monsters with her Stygian spatha swinging. Will caught sight of Austin as he temporarily abandoned his bow for his lesser used sword, braids whipping around him like Medusa's hair itself as he spun to the attack. Leo's fire burst across the battle, a shower of melted snow from Percy following to nearly drown their foes an instant later and the sparking sting of lightning from Jason darting through the watery conductor to electrocute the screeching monsters into dust.

They worked as a team. But even a team so complementary would struggle beneath the full weight of their opponents. Those opponents that at first seemed to be numbered in their hundred, proved to be far more for the replacements that flowed forth to stand in their fallen siblings dust. It was an endless tide and as Will spun towards a new onrushing wave and fought with the skin of his teeth he felt foreboding and something very like terror flood through him.

They would win. Will knew they would win because they _had_ to. He just didn't know how or at what cost.

Sweat was pouring down his forehead in stark contrast to the chill of the snow around him, to the white breaths of fog that spewed before his face with every gasp. Will barely even bothered to swipe a hand across his eyes, barely had a second to clear his vision before he was ducking beneath another dual attack of two identical child-snakes who looked _exactly_ like miniatures of Echidna. Definitely clones, then. Maybe lesser monsters than Echidna's Children, but children nonetheless. The vengeful fury that reeked from them in pungent waves was identical to that of Ladon, of the Colchian Dragon, of Cerberus in his mania.

Yes, they would win. Not yet, but Will knew they would win. They _had_ to win, because if they didn't vanquish the clones, the Caucasian eagle and its offspring, if they didn't defeat Echidna with her own murderous intent, then Nico and Hazel would always been chased. They would never be free. Will spared a brief glance over his shoulder in the direction towards where he'd last seen Nico, caught just a glimpse of him as he fought alongside his army of skeletons before diving into his shadows like a disappearing wraith and was gone.

And then he saw it. He saw her.

Will hadn't noticed her. Not at first. Not until he turned towards Nico and saw her beyond him in the direct line of his sight. Past where Nico had stood and across the clearing was Echidna herself. In all of her serpentine, gold and green monstrous glory, she was descending from the distant tree in which she'd coiled herself in elevation. Descending with single-minded intent in her gaze which was fastened upon the battle of demigods.

That was all Will got a chance to see, all he had time to register, before he was lurching and ducking away from a swooping eagle, then turning to face a renewed onslaught of girl-snake clones. That, and to recognise a resurfacing of fear, of the ever present terror that was different to that already threatening to overwhelm him, that had been kept at bay if only briefly.

 _Nico._

* * *

Echidna descended like the snake she was. Nico saw her from his periphery, glimpsed her looping fall from the tree with more grace than such a fall should entail.

He immediately dove into his shadows and launched himself to the edge of the battlefield. Just to see, just to observe, to get his bearings. He was winded, exhaustion rapidly growing within him from more than the backlash of killing the sphinx and from shadow travelling. He fought to maintain his grip upon the jittering skeletons that laced and stumbled through the dracanae, swinging their swords with single-minded determination yet little finesse. Orthrus had clattered into a heap of bones twice already without Nico's notice, each instance requiring him to drag upon his reserves and urge the skeletal bull back into action.

The shadow-diving too was draining in the slower yet still noticeable way that it did, not to mention that, quite without regard for his disinclination to irreversibly vanquish the monster spawn, he struck them all with his Stygian sword. His sucking, resentful, shadow-breathing sword. Nico could almost convince himself that they deserved it, the vengeful scum of Echidna. So much fighting, so much struggle – it was exhausting.

Echidna herself appeared to have finally noticed his arrival on the battlefield. Or perhaps she had simply chosen that moment to join the fray and target he and Hazel. Nico didn't how much time it had taken her to decide to descend – he always had difficulty with judging time when so distracted – but it was clear that she had. Breathing heavily, breath pluming whitely before his face and keeping half an eye on the monsters, Nico watched her.

She eased herself to the ground in a completion of the heavy fall that, even across nearly one hundred feet, he could swear he felt vibrating through the ground. Rearing like a cobra until she towered as tall as a building upon her serpentine lower half, she began to snake forwards. In her right hand, appearing from thin air as though conjured, she hefted a long, thick spearsword. It was a brutal-looking weapon, easily as long as a bus and as thick than Nico's waist around. The cruelly-pointed tip was long and slightly curved; voulge knife edge, if he were to hazard a guess, designed for hacking like an axe rather than slicing. The insinuations of such a weapon were daunting.

She was approaching the battlefield, the battle with his friends, far too quickly. If she got too close, if she reached within striking distance of his friends… Nico didn't know for sure if she had descended to directly target Nico and Hazel, but he considered it a likely possibility. Which meant he could spare them that at least. He was terrified at the prospect of facing her, of Echidna, the mother of monsters _,_ the monster incarnate herself, but Nico didn't have a choice. There was no one else who could do it, no one else who should.

With a supplanting, persisting push of energy, of command, into his wavering legions of the dead, another into Orthrus, Nico dove into his shadows once more. A second later he was beside Hazel, spinning immediately to slice at the monsters that surrounded them and sprung to attack him the moment he arrived. He sliced and spun his sword, bursting their assailants into dust with barely a thought as Hazel did the same at his back. He could feel the earth trembling beneath him, feel the minerals beneath the soil spring to attention at her welling focus. Nico glimpsed a trio of garnets spring from beneath his feet right behind some chalky white substance he thought might have been talc and shoot towards the dracanae around them like fired bullets.

As soon as they were afforded a brief respite, the ring of dracanae withheld momentarily and those attacking quickly dispatched, Nico turned to face his sister. She flinched slightly as he grasped her shoulder, spinning towards him with Stygian spatha raised. Nico didn't even twitch at the potential for losing his head – he knew the feeling, the reflexive urge to strike at anything when in the battle haze.

"Hazel," was all he said, gasped, and she swung to a stop.

Hazel was panting too. She had a blossoming bruise upon her face, was slightly hunched and her shoulders sagged as though from weariness. Nico didn't know exactly how long he'd been fighting for and she had been fighting longer. But her eyes were still bright, sharp, focused and intent, despite the frazzled curls springing loose from her braid as though sparked with lightning. She gasped a harsh breath. "Nico."

"Hazel. Echidna."

It was all he needed to say. Hazel, sword rising further in compulsive response to his words, snapped her attention towards Echidna. Or to where Echidna had been. They drew immediately to the rapidly approaching monster herself and she let out a hiss that was almost snake-like itself. "Fuck."

"You know what we have to –"

"Yes, of course," Hazel said with a curt nod, and without Nico's request she grabbed onto his arm. That was all the indication he needed that she agreed to his unspoken plan – the plan that they had decided upon a week ago when first discussing their near identical meetings with Hades. The plan that swore they would put themselves between Echidna and their friends at all costs. Nico dragged them into the shadow just before a pair of dracanae could launch themselves upon them.

An instant later they burst from the darkness – the clinging, stifling darkness that was dragging at Nico already for his weariness, which was definitely _not good._ Across the clearing they stood, removed from the frenzy of the battle between demigods, dracanae and eagles. He felt sick at the thought of leaving them to the fight but knew he had to thrust the consideration aside. No matter how Nico may long to remain with his friends, to fight alongside Will just to make sure that he was safe, that he was spared from further harm, that he had _someone_ to watch his back, Nico knew that it was more important to take care of Echidna. That he couldn't let Echidna get close enough to strike.

He'd thrown them not quite within striking reach of the mother of monsters now, but Nico was sure that they were noticeable enough to pause Echidna in her approach. He released Hazel's arm, widened his stance and hefted his sword. By his side, even without glancing towards her, Nico knew that Hazel was doing the same.

Echidna was huge. Even huger than she had appeared from a distance. She towered over them, even a solid twenty feet away where she'd coiled to a stop at their arrival. All of her green and golden size would have been enough to make Heracles quail. The rippling muscles of her abdomen, the mass of her tail, the bulging biceps that flexed as she hefted her spear – all of it put Nico in mind of a body builder who trained by crumbling rocks between her bare hands. One who easily crumbled rocks. He abruptly wasn't entirely certain that it was a good thing that she had noticed them.

She really was beautiful, as most half-human monsters tended to be. Even gigantic in proportions, her head at least ten times the size of a normal human's, he could realise that much. Cascades of dark hair tumbled over her shoulders to cover her breasts, thin angular face devoid of blemish but for the shimmer of scales that looked more decoration than scarring, and wide eyes of such a rich golden yellow they glowed even more brightly than the sphinx's.

Those eyes were terrifying. And they were trained directly upon Nico and Hazel.

A smile that wasn't beautiful in the slightest unfurled across Echidna's lips. Pointed fangs were coloured a faint green that Nico suspected to be acid and her lips peeled back in a mimic of a smile was more of a snarl than otherwise. Her spearsword lowered to point towards them. "Children of Hades. We meet at last."

Her voice was deep and thrumming, like the plucked cords of a bass without any of the beauty of the instrument itself. It rung hollow and ominous, overriding even the sounds of battle behind them, and immediately elicited a shiver that trembled down Nico's spine. From Echidna's mouth a plume of acidic air visibly wafted like swamp mist and Nico immediately shallowed his breathing. He glanced briefly towards Hazel before turning back towards the monster to reply. "You want to fight us, right? Well, what's taking you so long?"

"Do you mean to distract me, perhaps?" Echidna murmured, though her murmur was more of a growling roar for her sheer size. "To draw my attention from the battle your companions wage against my daughters?" Her smile stretched wider cruelly. "Are you attempting to protect them, perhaps?"

Nico felt the shiver grip him once more, but it was with genuine fear this time rather than simple nervousness. _No, don't let her get through, she mustn't get through, mustn't be able to get to them_. He felt his sword rise further, pointing towards the mother of monsters though it appeared but a toothpick in comparison to her size.

Before he or Hazel could reply, however, Echidna continued. It was with a hoarse chuckle that truly did vibrate through the earth, a momentary blossom of laughter that held not a hint of amusement. "No, children of Hades. I will not seek your friends. Not yet. It is you who most deserve my attention for it is you who have done me the greatest wrong." With a hiss as loud as a thousand snakes, Echidna leaned towards them, looming. Nico almost flinched for the sudden approach. Would she strike? Would she strike and actually hit -?

"You murdered my _children_ ," she hissed, and this time it was the hissing crack of flames, of rage and pure hatred. Her eyes narrowed to glowing slits in her eyes, roiling like molten gold. "You have destroyed them completely, never to return."

"Because you ordered them to attack us first," Hazel said. Her voice sounded like a thin waver in comparison to Echidna's.

Echidna swung her gaze to Hazel and Nico saw his sister flinch as surely as he did himself. "Not without reason, it would seem. You, who would so destroy with the Stygian iron of your father."

"We wouldn't have had to if you hadn't –"

"You will pay. You will pay for what you have done." Echidna overrode Hazel's attempted explanation. Nico didn't know why she even tried in the first place. There was not even a hint of the smile upon her face anymore, false or otherwise. Pure, unadulterated hatred took its place. "I will kill you, son and daughter of Hades. I will destroy you, just as you deserve. And when I am done, your friends will shortly follow." Then she lunged.

Nico barely managed to leap out of the way of the scythe-like slash of Echidna's spearsword. He felt the passing swipe overhead as he ducked, leapt to his feet, and had to dive into a roll to avoid it once more barely a second later. Then he was running. Just as he saw Hazel skirting one side of Echidna, Nico ringed the other. In seconds they were tearing towards the forest without a backwards glance to make sure that Echidna followed.

They didn't need to. Nico could feel the weight of her pursuit, the deadly focus of her stare. He would swear he felt the spearsword jabbing towards him once more. Nico didn't glance over his shoulder, however, for to do so would be to slow down. To do so would mean death.

But fear had momentarily vanished. It disappeared to be replaced by the determination that had flooded him so often in his battles against Echidna's Children. But this time… this time it was even more profound. Because Nico was fighting for his friends, for their lives that Echidna would so mercilessly steal. He was acting for the now, not the future. He would throw everything into destroying the mother of monsters herself, would fling forth every last ounce of his strength if it meant taking her down.

Nico didn't need to glance towards Hazel as they bounded through the trees with Echidna in their wake. He knew she felt the same.

* * *

Will saw Nico and Hazel flee across the far side of the clearing. Fleeing with Echidna, the giantess snake-woman herself, right on their tail and weaving like a sea serpent through thin water. A strange, horrifyingly cruel weapon that he recognised as a spearsword was raised high in her hand, and she looked just on the verge of throwing it like a javelin towards her targets. Will didn't even know how Nico and Hazel managed to stay out of striking distance. It seemed a certainty that she would be upon them already for the speed of her movement. And yet she wasn't. Not yet.

His heart was in his mouth. Quite literally, Will saw his life flash before his eyes with the speeding flight of Nico's movement, of Nico's disappearance into the distant trees. It was only utter luck that spared him from being speared by a dracanae for his distraction.

"Will!"

The sound of Austin's shout dragged his attention back to his own fight. Spinning, Will just managed to raise his quarterstaff in time to catch a jarring blow from one of the girl-snakes, throwing her caught sword aside and managing a kick to her iron-hard gut before out of nowhere Leo's fire sprung towards her and vanquished her into a shower of dust. And despite his desire, his _need_ , to chase after Nico, to provide what support he could, to just make sure he didn't die if nothing else, Will threw himself back into the fray.

He was tiring quickly. Will knew that much, could read his body's signals well enough to tell. He was already wearied from the fight with the Hesperides, from the heightened nerves that jittered and danced eagerly and exhaustingly in the heat of battle. It was wearing upon him – Will knew that too. But he didn't let it slow him. He couldn't.

A sword slashed at his back, just catching the edge of his leather cuirass and gouging a gash into the meat of Will's waist. He'd barely paused to gasp in a brief spark of pain when he'd assumed it before spinning to strike at the enemy who had delivered it to him. He caught himself a throbbing bruise on his shoulder from a plunging attack of an eagle when it scraped him with its talons just enough to throw him to the ground where he'd landed, naturally, upon the jagged edge of a rock. Dammit but it had _hurt_. A bruise from the slapping flat of a blade scored his left thigh, another slice along his right arm that twinged when he twisted it in just the wrong way, a throbbing rising in his toe from where he kicked out at a dracanae and slammed his foot at an awkward angle. Will felt as though he were spawning injuries left right and centre.

But he didn't let them slow him. He couldn't _._

Will was certain that his friends were suffering from their own injuries. He was sure that Nico was too, and that thought turned his gut sickeningly, paining him more than his own wounds. But there was nothing he could do, not now. Will did what that he could, and that was to thin the masses of dracanae, to divert the attacks of the diving giant eagles alongside his friends and the remaining skeleton warriors. The warriors themselves were rapidly dwindling in number; when they fell into bony pieces they didn't rise again. Orthrus had long since fallen back into a simple bony armband.

But the dracanae were dwindling too. Will was certain of it. Like wheat before a scythe, their overwhelming mass seemed to gradually halt in its constant rise, then turn around and begin to decline. As Will windmilled and spun, dodging and ducking from attacks, he was aware of that. He was aware of the thinning of their choking masses, of the thick layer of dust that now covered the muddy snow like a renewed, faintly golden snowfall itself. There may indeed have once been hundreds of Echidna's clones but that number had significantly decreased.

The eagles were the main problem, really.

Will could almost have counted the number of dracanae left when he felt a hand grab onto his arm. He spun, immediately on the attack, and nearly smacked Annabeth over the head before he made out the belated echo of her cry. "Will! Help!"

In a second he fell into sharp focus once more. A second later and he was on Annabeth's tail, and barely a moment more, slashing and hacking and clobbering their way through the thinning herds of girl-snakes, they staggered from the battle to –

"Percy!" Will darted to his side, dropping to the ground and immediately settling his hands upon him. Percy was ashen, limp and barely conscious. He'd taken a devastating blow to the head that still pulsed thick, swirling pools of blood from a wound in the side of his skull.

With a focus of his diagnostic capabilities, trained through his hands, Will launched himself into his patient to immediately assess the situation. He had no fears that he would be attacked from behind in the process – or at least not many. Annabeth was there, and Annabeth would stand between Percy and evil incarnate itself if it meant she could protect him. Annabeth who, Will registered with a detached part of his mind, was looking more than a little broken and wavering from injuries herself yet still managed to stand tall with her bone sword raised.

Will turned his attention solely to Percy. He winced mentally at the damage he saw, damage to the cranium, potential damage to the brain beneath. He would have to do something, something drastic and immediately _,_ or else Percy might be forever incapacitated by the injury or worse. Percy, who was supposed to be the model of a newer and stronger generation of demigods, was now lying as though dead before him with his life pumping out of his head in ruddy trickles. It was horrible

Will didn't let himself think. He just acted. A second after he shoved a piece of ambrosia into Percy's mouth he placed a gentle hand upon his forehead. Then, with a breath and a push of strength that set his hands aglow in golden light, Will began to sing. To sing a song shadowed by request for his father's healing aid.

 _"While you live, shine._

 _Don't suffer anything at all;_

 _Life exists only a short while,_

 _And time demands its toll…"_

It was perhaps a morbid choice of song given the circumstances, but the words Will sung, repeating when he reached its end, were strong in that they were incredibly old. That was how songs of healing worked – the strongest were those that resounded deeply with either Apollo or the healer themselves, the strongest of all being those sung with true feeling. Will poured his feelings, his desperation for Percy's survival, into the song and felt the warmth of his healing hands pulse with the gift of Apollo's magic.

He felt the knitting of Percy's skull, the redoubled production of blood to replace that pooling beneath him on the snow like a ruddy blanket and reproducing the cerebral fluid that had been damaged by the impact. Will thought it worked. He hoped it worked. Gods, did he hoped it worked. He didn't know how he could stand it if one of his friends was injured and he was unable to help. Will _had to help_.

Seconds passed into minutes, which grew in duration to the sound of Annabeth launching herself at a dracanae. Or perhaps it was a descending eagle, Will wasn't sure. He didn't glance over his shoulder to check. Then finally, finally, he felt the completion of the magic to the best of his ability, the strength flooding through his hands abruptly cease in a way that caused him to sag in weariness as he dropped his hands from Percy's head. It was worth it, however, for a moment later Percy sighed in a groan and actually rolled to his side, raising a hand to his head.

"Ow. Fucking hell…"

Annabeth was at Will's side in an instant. She leaned so far over Percy, her face crinkled into a frown of concern, that Will could barely see Percy at all. "Percy? Percy, can you hear me? What's my name? Do you know where you are? Can you feel this? How many fingers am I holding up?" That last, following a prod that drew a grunt from Percy, was accompanied by a somewhat frenzied swishing of hands before his squinting eyes. Annabeth, for all of her evident, nearly hysterical worry, knew her procedures.

Will immediately drew himself up to standing, turning to face any potential foes that might approach. Annabeth was distracted from her defence, meaning that it was up to Will to act in her stead. Yet when he turned it was to see barely a score of dracanae swirling through the demigods, looking more hyper aware and nervous than aggressive. It was as though they knew they wouldn't last long. Even the eagles seemed to have drawn back slightly to momentarily assess the scene. Which was fortunate, for Will was similarly momentarily distracted by a wave of dizziness nipping on the heels of his abrupt rise from crouching, an objection to any kind of movement in the aftermath of healing and the demand that _did he know how much his body was aching right now?_

Will did know. He knew only too well. But that knowledge didn't hinder him any. He thrust it aside with a mental shrug and raised his quarterstaff once more. Will wasn't a fighter but a healer, yet he knew when he had to turn to the offense. Now it was his turn to throw himself back into the mix.

* * *

Nico was getting used to escaping within an inch of his life. He didn't like it, not in the slightest, but he was getting used to it. Echidna was deadly. A demon with her spearsword, she lunged and swept at Nico and Hazel with a fury that matched that her Children and grandchildren had shown at each confrontation.

Nico fought. To the best of his ability and at times grasping barely by the tips of his fingers he fought. He leapt out of the swiping passage of Echidna's strikes by falling into his shadows, throwing himself from the other side of the snatching darkness to make an attempted jabbing strike in return before jumping back into them once more. Nico couldn't pause for even a second – to do so would mean taking a blow that might remove his head from his shoulders his at any time. He knew this. The first time he'd been too slow had left a deep gash in his side that throbbed, pounding and aching as it seeped blood through his jacket to dribble into his jeans.

Nico and Hazel had managed to draw Echidna away from the battle. They'd gotten as far as they could before she'd caught up to them, throwing her lower coils towards them like a lasso that landing in a smashing fall and barred them from fleeing any further. That had nearly been the end of them both – they'd been spared a quick and violent by luck as much as skill. Nico had just dodged aside from a deadly blow by half drawing himself into his shadows, the weapon skittering across his darkened, vaporous skin like ice that felt almost as painful as a real blow would have. Hazel, raising a cascade of hard gemstones and precious minerals and wrapping herself in them like protective armour, hadn't been so lucky. Echidna's spear had sliced towards her, smacking her bodily off her feet and throwing her a dozen feet away. Her gemstone armour had shattered into fragmented pieces.

Then the battle had really begun.

It was unlike any Nico had fought before. Echidna was the expert to her Childrens' amateur skill. The warrior to their trainee. She swept her striking blows with a speed that bellied her size, that shouldn't have been possible for a being so huge. Her resemblance to a striking snake had never been greater when she swung her spearsword, when she darted a grasping, clawed hand towards them with the pure intent of tearing them to shreds with her black nails, when she swept her body around as though it were a weapon in itself, like a tsunami crashing towards them but without the sparing fluidity of water.

The shadows were nearly consuming Nico for the amount of time he spent diving into them. Every second moment between slices that barely broke the surface of Echidna's skin he fell within their protective embrace, a protection that was becoming increasingly and rapidly harder to resurface from. The semi-shadowing, the vaporous defence that he had flung himself into briefly upon that first halting attack against the Nemean Lion so long ago, had drained Nico more than he had anticipated. It always did, always took him by surprise. Now he could physically feel himself trembling, each time he fell into the shadows harder to claw back out from, the " _stay with us… stay"_ and " _never let you go! Don't abandon us!"_ crowing desperately in his ears. It was getting harder and harder to ignore.

He didn't know what to do. Didn't know how they could win and even hope to survive. Nico barely had a chance to land a blow himself, and those he did were mere paper cuts upon Echidna's flesh. Hazel was hardly doing any better. She had wreathed herself in the tattered remains of her Mist, even that weakening with her own weariness, and lobbed hunks of gem, mineral and illusionary warriors at Echidna like missiles. Echidna batted them away easily, only to retaliate with a swipe of her weapon. Nico had caught sight of Hazel being tossed from her feet more times than he could count. He had felt the physical pain inflicted upon her as she had loosed a screaming cry as one blow fell a little too heavily.

Dodging another swipe of Echidna's spearsword, diving into the shadows and – _stay with us, don't leave_ – hauling himself free, Nico launched himself at the back of Echidna's head where he emerged. It was what felt like the hundredth time he'd done so, but his landing was only perhaps the third. The third chance he'd gotten to inflict a direct blow for all of Echidna's writhing and twisting and slicing to shake him free. He managed again, with only a momentary burst of triumph, and clawed back into his shadows to the sight of a thin, jagged slice piercing the skin of Echidna's neck before she turned her huge, snarling head towards him.

When Nico emerged again, she anticipated him. The weapon caught him a heavy, cleaving blow to his lower back, a strike that bit through the cuirass he wore beneath his jacket and piercing his skin. Nico loosed a hoarse, broken cry as he was flung through the air, launched even over the wall of Echidna's coiled tail to tumble jarringly, breathlessly, painfully into the snow. He crashed into a frozen tree hard enough to rob him of what little breath he had left.

Dizziness momentarily overwhelmed him. Nico couldn't see, and for a moment the panic that encompassed him at utter blindness flooded through him. Only for a second, however, before he blinked into blinding whiteness once more – whiteness, snow, the black-brown stands of skeletal trees robbed of their leaves in the chilling, deathly winter.

He hurt. He hurt all over. The blow to Nico's back throbbed with acute pain, making it hard to draw breath. The gash that was still seeping blood from his side was tight and made it nearly impossible for him to rise to all fours, let alone his feet. Bruises and cuts, straining muscles and encroaching exhaustion – Nico felt as though he were rapidly and disastrously crumbling to pieces.

A hissing shriek from Echidna's direction snapped Nico's blurred gaze towards her. He caught sight of the rippling coils of her tail, golden yellow and darkly green against the monochromatic backdrop of winter. That was all before, in a flurry of gems, shadows and gossamer Mist, Hazel appeared before him.

She was a mess. That was about all Nico could discern as he blinked the blurriness from his eyes. A mess of panting exhaustion, smeared blood and slumping shoulders. She barely seemed capable of keeping her spatha aloft. She dropped to her knees before him even as Nico rose from all fours to his own.

"Nico," Hazel stuttered, her voice barely audible. She glanced over her shoulder at Echidna and when she turned back he could make out the pure terror, the helplessness in her gaze that rose in her eyes. How she had managed to escape from the mother of monsters even momentarily? They were far enough away, Nico lobbed like a discarded ragdoll into the corner of the bedroom, that they perhaps had a second or two. "What do we – how can we –?"

Nico didn't know. It did seem hopeless. He didn't regret for a second that he'd raced towards Echidna, drawing her from the battlefield and away from his friends. Even now he didn't regret it, when death was looming over him. The only thing he did regret was Hazel, her death, the fact that, when he was killed – likely very soon – he wouldn't be able to defend her or any of his friends any longer.

 _No. No, they can't die. I can't let them die, I can't… never! I can never allow it!_ The voice was the strongest thing within Nico in that moment, stronger even than the fear that coursed through him as he saw Echidna's face looming and rapidly approaching them. Her spearsword swept at the trees, slicing through the thick trunks like a guillotine through taut necks and clearing the forest between them

Nico knew what he had to do.

"Hazel," he said. Or he croaked, his voice little more than a hoarse whisper. "Hazel, we have to give it everything."

Hazel, turned towards him from where she'd been staring wide-eyed at Echidna. Her eyes widened only further, terrified, the slowly swirling gold different to that of Echidna's. Beautiful, truly beautiful, and even more so when that terror morphed into determination so familiar Nico could feel it in his bones. "You mean –"

"I mean everything, Hazel," Nico said. He reached out a hand to grasp her arm. It would possibly be the last time the he would ever touch his sister. "The Caucasian eagle… it's better that we're not around to kill _him_ than that Echidna escapes."

Hazel nodded immediately with a surety that made Nico ache with heartfelt grief. His sister, so strong… they had barely come to know each other, barely had the chance to grow closer in recent years for their endless fighting. They hadn't had a choice.

"Alright," she said firmly. "Everything we've got. Leave nothing – leave nothing behind this time." She rose to her feet, both hands grasping her spatha and back turning towards Nico. "I'll fight alongside you till the end, Nico."

Nico didn't want to hear that. He didn't want to hear the words of resignation, of utter defeat, yet entirely focused and sure and desperately determined, from his sister. But he didn't have a choice. Because it was necessary. And as Echidna tore the forest apart to fall upon them, he rose to his feet to stand tall at her side.


	20. Chapter 20 - Ending

A/N: This is a DOUBLE UPDATE, simply because the second chapter is so short I couldn't just post it by itself. Don't forget to check it out!

I don't have all that much to say except... I'm sorry. Seriously. I'm not a cruel person but this sort of thing just happens. Enjoy the chapter!

* * *

 **Chapter 20: Ending**

The last of the dracanae were down, tossed aside and crumbled to dust with their vanquished siblings. Will was panting, aching, shaking with exhaustion of the battle-weary, of the strained and injured. He wasn't the only one, he was sure – he could see it in the set of Reyna's shoulders as she felt the weight of the injury she'd already been afflicted with earlier that day, in the teetering lowering of Austin's sword, in Frank's humanity rather than the animalistic form that he had tended towards. Percy, the idiot, had clambered to his feet barely healed to throw himself into back into the fighting with Annabeth at his side, and looked like a ghost for the paleness of his face. It was a relief to see the last of the girl-snakes.

That just left the eagles.

There were more of them than had been leftover from the confrontation at Seneca Falls. There was the bronze behemoth, the Caucasian eagle itself, that swooped and lunged with increased frequency now that his dracaenae relatives were entirely removed from the danger of his claws. Alongside, more than just the dregs that had escaped the first battle, that had fled from Nico the first time Will had seen them, were what the offspring of the eagle. Nearly half a dozen, each were hardly larger than a small pegasus, which… Will realised basically explained the severity of the situation that he could look at eagles of such a size and think them _small_.

The eagles had revamped their vengeful attacks, screaming with screeches of anger and aggression as they dove upon Will and his friends. They plummeted like hunting falcons towards them, scattering their wearied, staggering forces with such speed that it put their previous attacks to shame. Will and Jason, Piper and Percy and Annabeth and all of the rest of them, barely managed to raise their weapons before they were forced to leap for cover.

Will only just ducked from a striking attack himself, one of many successive ducks, when the demanding though arose to the forefront of his mind that said their cowering dodging was getting them nowhere. Throwing himself into the relative shelter of the ruinous, abandoned stone building with back slapping painfully against the wall, he sunk to his haunches, quarterstaff clutched to his chest as he struggled to regain his breath.

Seconds later Kayla appeared at his side. She was panting just as heavily as Will was, gasping for breath with her bow in one hand and a long knife in the other. Her spiked hair was in shambled chaos, one sleeve of her jacket entirely ripped off and she had lost an entire boot, her exposed sock soaked and half frozen. A ruddy stain marred her collar that he hoped looked worse than it was and when she turned towards him it was with a faintly crazed glassiness in her eyes. The battle craze, even wearied as she was. Will doubted he looked much better but, at least he still had both of his boots.

"We're in deep shit," Kayla said shortly, tensing slightly as the shadow of an eagle passed overhead. Passed and thankfully didn't appear to see them.

Will nodded, fingers tightening and loosening in spasms around his quarterstaff. He could hardly feel them for their numbness. "We're all exhausted. I don't know – I don't know how…"

Kayla shook her head. "Those eagles, they seem to have dredged up some battle strength from somewhere."

Closing his eyes briefly, Will nodded once more. "We have to defeat them, though."

"We _can't_ ," Kayla spat angrily, though Will knew her anger was driven more by frustration than any real anger. "Nico and Hazel are fighting against the mother of monsters and _we_ can do _fuck all._ "

Will winced, not for her words so much as for the reminder of Nico. He hadn't seen Nico for… for he didn't even know how long. Minutes? Had it been an hour yet? Gods, was he alright? What if he was injured or worse, what if he was…? Will didn't want to think about it but he couldn't deny it was a possibility. Echidna was formidable; he didn't need to have fought her to know that much. If there was ever to be a challenging foe it was her. They hadn't seen her return after chasing after Nico and Hazel, which Will had no doubt she would should she – _Gods, please no_ – happen to triumph. But what if Nico, or Hazel, were felled? What if even now they lay broken and bleeding as their sibling stood over them in defence, facing down the metaphorical barrel of a gun in their last seconds.

The thought made Will feel the sudden urge to vomit.

"… can't defeat the Caucasian eagle because _nothing_ will defeat it fully but Stygian iron," Kayla was still muttering. Will doubted she was even listening to her own words as she rose slightly to peer over the half-wall into the clearing. "Arrows won't do shit, they won't injure them at all unless I manage a shot into an eye or an open mouth. Not even the hydra arrows can…"

Will raised himself slightly to peer over the wall too, glancing across the clearing. He saw Reyna make a darting sprint from tree line to tree line, rolling and attempting a rising thrust with her spear as an eagle descended upon her. They wrenched away from one other, neither having landed a blow, and Reyna disappeared into the relative safety of the trees once more. That was all they could do, Will knew. The best they could do was make a running break for it and attempt to draw the eagles down, unless Jason or Frank could throw themselves into the air which, if memory of their mutual exhaustion was any indication, neither were capable of any longer. They couldn't _do_ anything. Even as he watched, Will saw Piper make a break for it and do the same as Reyna had moments before to as little success.

 _We can't injure them_ , he thought, shaking his head as his hand twitched in a spasm around his quarterstaff. _We can't get close enough to strike them, and if we could it likely wouldn't do anything. And our arrows won't –_

His thoughts abruptly stilled as a half-memory swam to the forefront of his mind. Memory of the sphinx, of his white-fletched arrow protruding from its chest after actually piercing it. That was the sphinx itself – what could such arrows, tipped with the teeth of the Colchian Dragon, do to the offspring? Would they be able to penetrate the plumage of the Caucasian eagle too? Of its offspring

Will didn't pause another moment to consider. Snapping his quarterstaff in a double stamp upon the ground, the bowstring snaking forth and springing into tautness as it curved the reinforced length of bow, Will reached over his shoulder into his quiver. It was pure chance, or perhaps fate, that found him drawing a white-tipped arrow on only the second attempt.

Rising to standing – dangerous standing, and to Kayla's muffled exclamation of "What are you doing?!" – Will drew his bow. He aimed at the lowest flying eagle, a younger one about the size of Reyna's pegasus Sergeant, and drew a steadying breath. When Austin leapt forwards, sword raised to strike at the eagle upon its anticipated descent, he followed the eagle's plummeting dive. Followed it, waited until the moment that Austin rolled into a dive to avoid the grasping claws, until the eagle's talons scraped across the ground briefly before launching itself back into the air, and let his arrow fly free.

It flew straight and sure, whizzing across the distance of barely forty feet. Such a span forbade missing for a child of Apollo and Will didn't even have a second to fear for the possibility of missing. He didn't get the chance. A split second after his release, the arrow struck the eagle in the chest. Struck and embedded, sinking nearly to the fletching.

The eagle shrieked. It was a pained but furious screech, echoing through the clearing as though from a loudspeaker. Then the eagle fell. It had climbed barely far enough to even fall at all, but the ten feet or so that it had risen were retreated upon when its wings failed and it crashed back to the earth. As though the impact had shattered it to pieces, the copper eagle burst into dust upon impact.

There was a brief moment of silence across the clearing whereby even the eagles up above appeared in a state of shock. Will heard Kayla's choking disbelief at his side. "How did you -? How did -?"

"Colchian Dragon-tooth arrow," Will said shortly without even glancing her way. The hiss his sister emitted a second later bespoke her immediate understanding for which he was grateful. He didn't feel the inclination, nor that they had the time, to undertake an explanation.

"About time we found a solution!" Kayla exclaimed, loud enough for her voice to project across the clearing. "About fucking time!" And with that, snatching her own white-tipped arrow from her quiver, she leapt over the ruinous half wall and, bow raised, charged into the clearing. Will followed right on her tail, fierce determination and even a hint of satisfaction brushing aside his lingering exhaustion. With this they could beat the eagles. Maybe not the Caucasian eagle himself but certainly the others. Will just had to fire his arrows with as much accuracy as he just had.

But he didn't get the chance. Will had barely taken a step from the ruins when some unspoken call seemed to draw the attention of every eagle hovering in the clearing. As one, avian heads turned, training upon the distant tree line on the opposite side of the clearing. For barely a moment, their sudden petrification froze even the demigods in their attack as the fear that something was going to happen.

It did happen. So fast that Will almost didn't comprehend what happened at all until they monsters had disappeared. As one, the eagle turned with metallic screeches and, led by the Caucasian eagle himself, sped across the clearing with communal cries of vengeful rage.

Will and his friends were left standing in stunned confusion. Slowly, stumbling from their respective cover, they drifted into the clearing with eyes trained upon the passage of the eagles.

"What the…?" Thalia asked, staggering slightly and clutching a hand to her elbow as though it pained her. "What just…?"

"Did they just…?" Jason muttered.

"Are they gone?" Leo said, glancing around at the rest of them with the same dizzy blinking that afflicted them all. "Why did they just leave?"

Will knew. Will knew immediately, with a certainty that terrified him. All thought of Colchian Dragon-tooth arrows were suddenly erased from his mind as reality made itself known. He was already running, chasing the retreating figures the giant eagles, a cry of _"Nico!"_ spilling from his tongue without his behest. He barely heard the similar cry of Frank for Hazel, the sound of crunching footsteps as his friends all leapt into action in the same desperate response.

 _Nico… they're going for them, and it will be Nico and Hazel against Echidna_ and _the eagles._ Real fear welled within Will at the thought. _Hold on. Gods, just hold on until I can get there. Please._

* * *

Echidna loosed another scream. Another warbling, animalistic shriek that was so loud it tore at Nico's eardrums like claws shredding skin. "Pitiful spawn of Hades! Disgusting slime, cretins of darkness and death! How dare you!" Then louder, in a cry of demand for the third time, "Children! Children, to me!"

Nico didn't pause to consider her words. He didn't have the headspace, the focus or the time to do so. His mind was trained specifically upon his sole task, that which he had afforded himself. Because it was working. If only briefly, if only for now, it was working. They were _winning_.

Nico had thrown caution to the wind. The block that sat within him, within Hazel, within every demigod – the last door closed upon the reserves maintained to save them from the surety of death when all else failed – had been flung wide. Nico was not stronger. He was not faster, nor more powerful. But desperation manifested itself as a physical entity that gave him a refastened hold upon that which he possessed. He fought with the fullness of his being.

He and Hazel flung themselves wholly at Echidna. Hazel, mid step and spatha raised, had adorned herself in a thick armour of diamond so pure it was almost as clear as glass, the earth bending and heaving beneath them briefly as the precious stones soared to adorn her skin. Her Mist wreathed around her in an army of black and white wraiths, clogging the air and masking the reality of her location. Hazel charged headlong towards Echidna, Mist and earth roiling in her wake.

Nico followed in step beside her. He thrust aside the clinging hands of the ghostly voices that threatened to drag him into darkness, into oblivion, as he protected himself with semi-transparency in a blanket of shadows. With sword raised in one hand, he dragged tangible shadows into existence in his other like a whip of lashing nine-tails. A whip that twisted and curled like snakes themselves, tendrils shuddering with a desperate eagerness to attack.

Nico let it. In his charge, ploughing headlong towards Echidna and only deviating when she swung her spearsword at him, he dove into his shadows. An instant later, he sprung back into the light halfway along the length of her tail and, with a lobbing throw, cast a darting tendril of his shadows across the swelling and contracting expanse of Echidna's body. Like a restricting chain, it fastened across her scales, clamping down tightly and pinning her to the ground. Nico dove back into the shadows before Echidna could even complete her turn towards him, screeching in rage as she did with weapon raised.

He reappeared, flung another chain, and disappeared once more. Nico thrust aside the call of the shadows, the temptation that threatened to drag him _down down down_ every time and burst forth to toss another seconds later. He was only distantly aware that Hazel was doing the same; Mist shrouded her movements, drew distractions, locked Echidna in a cage of her own perceptions that grounded her nearly as firmly as Nico's chaining shadows even as she called upon the wealth of the earth and jabbed roots of gemstone and mineral into Echidna's body. Garnet and talc – apparently the most fruitful in the ground of the forest – sprung about her in necklaces and bracelets of red and white, locking her to the ground. The precious bands ringed the serpentine length of Echidna's body in stripes alternating with the blackness of Nico's shadows.

Exhausting didn't even begin to cover it. The speed of his movements, of his diving into the shadows and the brief, Herculean battle he waged each time he clambered back out of them again, drained Nico's strength until even his vision began to blacken. He didn't slow, though. Not even when Echidna loosed her cries of outrage and demands for support from her remaining child and grandchildren. Not when her entire length was chained to the ground and she could do nothing but wriggle and writhe with the upper, human half of her body. Her spearsword slices and spun around her like the propeller of a helicopter, but Nico and Hazel moved too fast, ducking and dodging, protected by shadows and Mist, for a blow to strike. They threw their all into their fight.

As Echidna loosed another shrieking bellow, Nico skidded to a stop alongside Hazel, just out of reach of the swinging spearsword. He panted, nearly crumpling to his knees, blinking to clear the encroaching blackness from the edges of his vision. It wasn't working, but Nico hardly care. He didn't have a moment to consider it. He gazed up at Echidna without even the strength to feel fearful of what he saw, even registering that she was utterly terrifying.

Echidna's ethereal beauty had morphed. It skewed as her jaw lengthened, dislocating like that of a snake so that her fangs and trio of forked tongues were bared. Her golden eyes were like blinding suns in the golden-green paleness of her face, pupils narrowing to vertical slits and brows lowered into a spear of savage hatred. Her cheeks were hollowed, cavernous, stretching her skin until it was nearly translucent, even through the speckling of scales upon her face. And Nico barely caught a glance of it for the twisting and wrenching that she struggled with, her entire body undulating in an attempt to free herself.

"Aethon! Aethon, my child, to me! I _demand_ you! Now, to me, now! Destroy them, kill them, rip them to shreds!" Echidna screeched boomingly, the echo of her cry erupting in an explosion that echoed through the forest. "Aethon, fly speed to me!"

Nico spared a moment to glance blearily towards Hazel. "Aethon?"

"The Caucasian eagle," Hazel gasped. Even with their brief respite she was still panting as though she'd run a marathon or ten. "It must be the –"

"Right," Nico croaked. His voice was barely even audible now, as faded as his vision. "Then we'd better –"

"Quickly."

"Yeah. You –"

"I'll distract down the bottom?"

"Right."

"And you'll –"

"I'll go for the head."

"Right."

That was it. That was all the exchange they shared, and it wasn't even really needed. It made sense – Nico went for Echidna's head because he could throw himself that high. Simple as that. Without a second thought, he dragged his heaving, aching, fading body into the shadows, sword shakily raised, and launched himself to his foe.

* * *

Will ran as though his father had gifted his feet with wings. He didn't know how he kept pace with the eagles but somehow he did. Somehow he managed. And somehow, barely even pausing to consider, he grasped over his shoulder, pulled arrow after arrow from his quiver, and sent them flying towards the copper giants that flew overhead like fighter planes honing in on their targets. Will loosed them and, when his white arrows flew, though he rarely felled them, sent several momentarily flailing in their flight before struggling to right themselves.

He didn't have to think about where he was going. The eagles would lead the way. Which was, in some ways, a very, very good thing because – _Nico, please be alright, hold on, just a little bit longer_ – Will didn't think he had the headspace to find his own way. Leaping through the snow, feet barely touching the ground, he was only detachedly aware that the someone ran at his side was… Frank, he thought. Frank, who similarly fired arrows at the soaring eagles with his own white arrows. Will didn't know how he'd figured it out – just from watching Will himself? – but he was grateful that he'd made the connection nonetheless.

Of course it was Frank that ran at his side, Will knew. If there was anyone who would manage to keep pace with him it would be Frank, and not because they were both the tallest of their party, and certainly not because they were the fastest. Who else would have such a desperate desire, a pure _need_ to get to Nico and Hazel's side, even approaching that of Will's?

Will heard Echidna before he saw her. He heard her hissing cries, her shrieks of anger, her demands of, "Aethon! Aethon, _now!_ " Then he saw her and had he an inkling less of desperate determination, a touch more of the terrified fear that coursed through him, he would have stumbled, staggering to a stop at what he saw. At the sight of Echidna, mother of monsters herself, bound to the ground but for her torso and upper body by bitingly tight rings of red and white and black. She was wriggling and squirming, struggling to fight loose, but it did little to no good. In her hands she swung her spearsword in arcing loops that would have rendered the very air in two had it been just a sliver sharper. She was furious, that much was evident.

Then Will saw Nico. Nico and Hazel, standing side by side. They looked like shadows themselves, and that terrified Will more than anything else. Shadows of exhaustion, bleeding and staggering even in standing pause just out of reach of Echidna's swipes. He saw them exchange words, saw Nico – his face so pale it was whiter than death and just slightly tinged with blue and _Gods_ the sight scared Will, _terrified_ him, more than anything he'd ever seen.

Fading. Fading? _Fading!_

 _Don't you fade on me, Nico!_

Then Nico disappeared. For a moment Will truly thought he had. Then he realised he'd simply slipped into the shadows, even as Hazel sprung forwards with a burst of speed and energy that she couldn't possibly have possessed from her clearly exhausted state. A wave of earth – no, of gems, of precious rocks – rose from the ground alongside her as to Will's eyes she flickered out of existence. The Mist. She'd disappeared into the Mist just as Nico did into the shadow.

Will registered several things at once, though he wasn't entirely sure in what order. He wouldn't know, not until later, how it had actually happened. He wouldn't piece the puzzle together until afterwards, when he sat in wait, in silence, in horror and misery and considered what else he could _possibly_ have done to make it better.

Hazel sprung forwards, her spatha slicing at Echidna's abdomen and piercing her deeply and widely in the gut, adorning her with a golden wound like a smiling mouth. A burst of visible green acid sprung forth to reveal the darkness of gleaming entrails beneath before Hazel darted into her Mist once more to escape Echidna's swinging spearsword.

Nico burst from the shadows at the giantess-monster's shoulder. He barely seemed to grab a hold of her scaled skin, barely managed to keep himself stable, as his obsidian Stygian sword rose to plunge downwards into a wound that Will could already see etched onto Echidna's neck.

The eagles arrived. Barely three of them now, but enough to exact their vengeance. The eagles, screeching and wailing in fury, charged towards their mother and grandmother. The Caucasian eagle, the size of a fighter jet, led the way.

He honed in.

He targeted.

Will saw it all. The eagle aimed straight for Nico. He shot straight for him as Nico drew his sword back to plunge into Echidna's neck with what _could_ be a killing blow. Nico who didn't see, didn't know –

" _NO!_ "

The scream tore from Will's mouth as he flung his hand over his shoulder for an arrow. For a white-tipped arrow that desperation assured he grasped. Leaping into the clearing of destroyed trees and muddy sludge, Will nocked his arrow, sighted and loosed.

The arrow fired straight. It targeted with the precision of a missile given coordinates. It fired, sprung forth, spewing death with its pure whiteness just as talons struck.

Too… late.

Will felt himself die.

* * *

Nico saw it all happen. From the corner of his eye, though he didn't turn, Nico saw the Caucasian eagle slice through the air towards him. He saw his golden eye flash viciously, his bronze beak and metallic claws reaching.

But Nico didn't turn. He'd made his decision. He would stick to it.

He could barely keep his feet as it was. With single-minded focus, the last of his strength, Nico ignored his approaching death soaring towards him on bronze wings and thrust downwards.

He felt his sword pierce. He felt Stygian iron slide through the gash he'd already made into the back of Echidna's neck, a wound surprisingly easier to inflict upon the mother herself than it had been upon her Children. He drove down, an savage thrust, and buried his sword to the hilt.

Echidna screamed piercingly.

The eagle struck.

Nico wasn't sure which hurt more.

Claws dug into his chest, into his back, breaking through skin and armour as though they were paper thin. He felt his breath leave him in a sudden rush, the momentary pause of shock, of weightlessness, as the force of the monster tore him loose from his perch on Echidna's shoulder. Then he was soaring through the air. Soaring, flung, actually weightless this time.

And then the claws released him and he was falling. The pain hit him fully as he struck the ground.

It was an explosion. Every part of his body was by turns burst into flame and doused in water colder than ice. Stretching, tearing, breaking, he felt as though he was torn in two. He longed to scream, to release some of the agony in an audible cry, but even his voice failed him. He couldn't breathe.

It hurt.

It _hurt_.

Everything, the entire world, was a riot of pain.

 _Gods, how can something hurt_ so much!

Nico's vision was gone. He couldn't hear anything but the erratic throbbing of his heartbeat in his ears, the searing rush of his blood through his veins. Even that was nearly drowned out by the sheer _torment_ of _so much pain._

He didn't know if Echidna was dead. He didn't know if the Caucasian eagle was going to return to kill him. And he didn't even care. Nico just wanted it to stop. He wanted it to end.

 _Make it stop! Gods, Father, just make it stop!_

He felt a hand grasp him. Someone's hand that he sorely wished would just _let go_. It hurt, it hurt so much, just that touch, fingers curled around his shoulder, that – that _touch_ that became more than a touch, that shook, that demanded. And even through the fireworks, the explosions of pain that flashed red across his blinded eyes, Nico could hear him.

"No, no, no, no, please, of Gods no, please don't –"

Will's voice, nearly drowned out by the pain that seized Nico's body in a merciless gasp and tore it apart, by the pounding in his head, the throbbing of his heartbeat.

"Please don't do this to me again – I can't – don't leave me, not again –"

Will's voice, pleading, desperate. Probably his hands that were holding him, that clamped over Nico's mouth and slipped something inside and – _Gods, take it away, stop, it hurts!_ Nico just wished he'd let him go.

"Please, don't leave, don't leave – don't take him away, don't take away my light – "

His light. In the depths of Nico's pain, in the darkness that was steadily drawing him downwards, that blessedly even blotted out some of the wrenching, brutal pain, he heard those words. _My light_. And it reminded him… reminded him through the _pain-hurt-aching-stop, just make it stop! End it!_ of what he'd heard barely an hour before.

Of the unspoken words, so torn with grief it hurt to hear.

Of the power of the sphinx's necklace that nestled still in his pocket, that flared in his mind when he glanced at Will.

 _I can't lose it, I can't lose my light… not again, please not again… don't let me be left in the dark, in the shadow, not again… I can't, don't take it away from me, not my light…_

Even through it all, through the agony and the searing torture, Nico felt wonder. He'd wanted to ask Will about that, had wanted to talk to him about what it meant, those words spoken into his mind. The light? What light? Apollo's light, that bathed each one of his children?

But now it made sense. It made sense and even through the agony that was tearing his body apart Nico felt the pain of it. The sadness. The misery and the sincere regret.

 _I… I'm his…_

He couldn't finish the thought. Coherency was beyond him. Then even Will's voice faded, the pain and ache of his touch disappearing as Nico fell. Only one thought remained wavering at the forefront of his mind.

 _I'm sorry, Will._

* * *

Echidna fell. After a screech that could have torn the world apart, that could have been heard from Australia let along Long Island and Camp Half-Blood, she fell. It was in a burst of golden dust so bright that it looked like the sun itself had exploded. She fell, killed by the thrust of Nico's sword, and was gone.

The Caucasian eagle fell too. To Will's arrow first, striking into the bronze feathers of his, but then to Hazel. Hazel who, in a fit of exhausted fury, threw herself at the eagle tumbling to the ground with a sweeping windmill of her spatha. The giant eagle had barely spiralled from the sky, wings grazing the destruction strewn across the ground, the splintered, fallen trees, before Hazel struck. With a cry, a scream of pain and utter fury, she thrust into the wound at the back of his neck that Nico had made weeks ago and stabbed in a full-body strike downwards.

Will barely saw it. He barely saw Echidna either, her golden shower beautiful for more than just the radiance of the colour. Beautiful because it was the destruction of the mother of monsters. For good. Will didn't see her because Nico...

Because Nico fell too.

The world faded for Will. Everything else faded into insignificance. Will was exhausted but it didn't matter. His wounds ached, but he didn't care. He knew the offspring of the eagle, the two remaining, still soared overhead and screeched their rage and mourning, their vengeance, but Will didn't see any of it. His focus was narrowed upon Nico because he'd fallen, where he'd crashed like a discarded toy from the Caucasian eagle's claws, and lay in a crumpled heap.

Will was flying across the field of broken trees and slick remains of muddy snow, feet barely touching the ground. He bypassed even Hazel as she staggered towards her brother, already croaking and crying out for him as she stumbled in her exhaustion. He skidded, skidding across his knees to fall beside Nico's slumped form with not a care for the snow, the cold, the ache of his muscles and the pain in his knee that he hadn't barely been aware of until that moment. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered because Nico...

He was torn apart. For the first time that Will had seen years he was dressed in a colour other than black. A vivid, pumping red that darkened as it seeped into his clothes. No, not just his clothes, because his jacket was torn, his shirt beneath and destroyed cuirass ripped to shreds. Even his jeans had been shredded, though whether from the eagle or the previous fights Will didn't know. The skin bared beneath was... it was ruined.

Gashes streaked his chest like the stripes of a tiger, flowing blood painting it an even deeper red shade. Bruises had already sprung into blossoming and darkening stains. The blood was - it was everywhere, pooling and staining the snow like a sea of poppies around him, spread beneath him like a morbid blanket.

Nico himself was broken, and not just for his clothes. His limbs were sprawled and twisted at unnatural angles just like that of a doll that had been carelessly discarded. He was slumped on his shoulder, the arm caught beneath him stretched out and oh Gods it was definitely broken. Will reached for Nico, grasping a shoulder but pausing with the unconscious instinct not to turn him over more fully onto his back.

His eyes were open but only by half, staring blindly. Tears leaked forth that Will doubted he even knew fell, dribbling down his cheeks. His face was haggard, almost as much blue as white, and fading and it was horrifying and he was _fading_ , as though the solidity that held him together no longer endured.

Will was sobbing. He only realised when he reached for Nico's hand and grasped their icy coldness, when he leaned across him until he was nearly spread atop of him, and he saw his own tears fall onto Nico's face. He was crying, terrified, hurting so badly and _no_ , _this can't be happening, my Nico, my Nico is fading and he's_ -

Will was speaking as well, babbling something that he didn't even hear. It didn't matter because it wasn't doing any good. Nico didn't seem to hear him, didn't respond to his tears, to the touch of Will's hands as he scrambled to grasp his shoulder, touch his face, cling to his arm. So cold. He felt so cold, and Will swore that he could feel the solidity of Nico falling to vapour.

He couldn't think what to do.

He knew he had to do something but he couldn't think what it was.

He had to – Will had to do something, something that swum to the surface of his mind with the frantic thought of _must do, now!_ when someone else's hand, someone who wasn't Nico so it didn't matter, reached forwards and shoved something into his mouth. Ambrosia, Will realised, but it was a passing thought. Secondary to his distress, to his panic, his fear. For once, every thought of doctoring, of acting rationally, of doing what he must, abandoned him.

And then Nico's eyes, his dripping eyes that leaked not real tears but tears all the same – they closed. They closed and they didn't open again.

Will's world collapsed. Nothing could have possibly been more painful than that moment.

He knew that there were people around him. He didn't know how many, or who it was that was touching his shoulder, was saying something frantic into his ear. He didn't care because Nico, his Nico, was lying before him, and he was broken, and fading, and so cold and his eyes had closed.

A swelling grew within Will. An expanding force that was both fiercely warm and sharply painful. Will didn't know what it was and he didn't care, even as it choked him. He slumped forwards, arms grasping Nico, holding him close and folding fully over him. Sobs wracked through him, shaking him bodily, and that swelling only expanded with every seconds.

It spilled forth in the urge for song.

Will's eyes were closed, head bowed and pressing his forehead into Nico's. Even so he saw his hands begin to glow. He felt the warmth, the strength of his father, the force of magical healing, flooding through him. His lips moved without his direction.

 _"Ninna nanna, oh, ninna oh,_

 _Sleep, child, go to sleep._

 _Let shadows fall upon your back,_

 _Wrapped snug from demons you will keep."_

Nico had sung that lullaby. His mother's lullaby, he'd said, the murmur of Italian beautiful and lulling and so reminiscent of Nico himself that Will couldn't help but think of him entirely when he heard it. Even when Will sung it himself.

 _"Ninna nanna, oh, nanna oh,_

 _Sleep, child, go to sleep._

 _Diamonds of light and steel of black,_

 _Ghostly fingers beckon deep..."_

It hurt to sing. It leached everything out of Will as he uttered the words. They thrummed from within him, rich and deep and aching, and wholly for Nico.

And warm. From Will's hands, there radiated warmth. And healing but... but it didn't feel like enough. It felt too late. Too late and Will felt himself dying all over again. The air wrapped around him was chilled, the snow beneath him icy, but Will didn't feel the cold. His injuries pained him, throbbed, demanded attention, but they were negligible compared to the greater pain. Will could hardly breath because Nico… was Nico breathing? He didn't know if he was even _breathing_.

When Will opened his eyes, staring through the swirl of tears at the broken, fading face beneath him, Nico didn't look back.


	21. Chapter 21 - Choosing

**Chapter 21: Choosing**

There was a choice. He was given a choice because there was always a choice. At the end, anyway. Most just didn't realise it was a choice at all.

One way lead down. Down into darkness, into shadow, into the gloom and depths of a pit shrouded in mystery.

The other lead upwards. It was similarly indiscernible but for its brightness rather than shadow. So bright that he could almost feel the light on his skin. His skin which was... not entirely... there.

To most the choice might be easy: stay away from the darkness and embrace the light. However temporarily blinding, light would always lead to illumination, to freedom, to understanding. Darkness was shrouded, confusion, smothering.

To most the choice would be easy. He was not most.

For to him, the darkness had always been comforting. Not the complete darkness of blindness – such stifling shadows could never be comforting – but he could see in the darkness. It cradled him, cocooned him, protected him. It concealed the ugliness he saw within himself, the parts he sought to escape from. It was a part of him, like the very air he breathed, whereas...

In contrast, the light was blinding. It was too bright and he'd never liked the light. It showed too much, revealed the shadows for what they were, for what they hid. He liked his shadows, liked the way they could conceal. The light – it was brutal, merciless, unforgiving. Every light was the same except...

Except for _His_ light.

That memory... it was the only thing that might draw him back. The only thing that forced him to fight against the urge to simply let go. The darkness, it offered rest. Soothing, calming rest, ease and a final respite from struggling for so long. He wanted that. He wanted it so badly. He'd been fighting for far too long and he was tired. He just wanted to rest, for it to stop. He just wanted... just...

But there was that light. Yes, it was blinding. Yes, it was assaulting, promised to drag him back into trial after trial, never easing, never letting up. But _He_ was there. He was a different kind of light and He was beautiful and... and maybe that was enough to keep fighting for. Even exhausted, even when he felt in that moment, in that instant, that he wanted nothing more than to simply stop, to cease the pain and the exhaustion, the strain and the fighting... there was the prospect of Him.

Was it worth it? Was it worth the struggle? It would be so easy to simply sink, to let himself drift down into the shadows. A decline was always easier to step than an ascent. It was always less of a struggle to simply let himself slide rather than to tense his muscles and clamber up the endless climb. Why were the most important battles always so hard?

He had a choice. There was always a choice, just like everyone else was given at the end. Some people didn't see it as a choice at all but they just didn't understand. He did. He saw his choice and... and...

And he decided. Shadows concealed, held mystery, were unfathomable, but they were familiar in their unpredictability, familiar in a way that he knew, that he could accept. That he could embrace. And climbing was exhausting, but there was a warm light at the end of the tunnel.

The decision wasn't really a decision at all. When he really thought about it, there was only one route he could take. One that he rightly should take, after everything. After all that he'd done, all that he deserved.

He took his step.

* * *

A/N: Now, I'm not so cruel as to leave such a cliffhanger as that for a whole week. I'll be updating at Christmas at the latest :)


	22. Chapter 22 - Being Again

A/N: So this is the end! The final chapter! Just before I finish up, I'd really like to give a massive thank you to all of my readers and reviewers - a whole six months this series has been posting once a week! That's some dedication from you wonderful people! Special thanks - because I can't not - to those I've seen message me time and time again or with such lovely words; EsterOfPersi (you're always so lovely, sweetie), HarukaDiamond999, and pinnymph.

Thanks so much you wonderful people. Love you heaps and, in the (likely) event that I keep writing I'll maybe see you all a little later. I hope you enjoy the last chapter!

* * *

 **Chapter 22: Being Again**

The warmth of summer had hit full stride. The midday sun glared down from overhead, beaming a radiant white that blinded the unwary eye if it dared to turn upwards. The sound of distant laughter, of buzzing chatter, rung through the humid air, the barest of breezes just alleviating some of the heat that reflected off the pale sidewalk almost as blindingly as the sun itself. The smell of the nearby procession of restaurants, of a hot dog stall, families with boxes of chips reeking of salt and vinegar, rose from every direction and combined in a confusing parfait of aromas that was somehow pleasant.

Closing his eyes, Will drew a deep breath of the smell of lunch, drinking in the salty flavours to the sound of passers-by and the screech of seagulls harassing picnickers for a bite. The distant ocean was barely audible; Will wouldn't have even been able to see the beach for the distance he strolled. When he opened his eyes again, it was to affix his gaze upon the young girl racing through the playground.

She was a beautiful child, barely twelve years old. Her rich, dark skin drunk in the sunlight like burnished bronze, curls tumbling over her shoulders in dark waves touched in red for the brightness of the sun. Will could almost see the animation of her dark eyes even across the distance between them, the dancing laughter within mirrored in her wide smile as it stretched across her face.

"Shadow! Shadow, come on, where are you? Come on, Shadow!" Her high voice resounded across the park, weaving through the chatter of the picnickers and over the laughter of merrymakers. Racing across the grass, she skidded to a stop at the very centre of the grassy clearing, turning on the spot and drawing her gaze around herself searchingly. A moment later, her piercing whistle called for attention, and just about every dog in the region raised their head and glanced towards her.

Will felt the beginnings of a smile touch his lips. The expression made his cheeks hurt just slightly, the muscles sore because -

"She loves him, really. Been smitten for as long as I can remember. It's like they were meant for one another."

Glancing over his shoulder, Will turned to Melissa Ioannidis. Her gaze was settled upon her daughter, as warm as the sun itself and a perfect mirror image of the child's. Will suspected that Eve would be very similar her mother when she reached adulthood, and not only just in appearance. He shifted his smile towards her. "Had you considered getting a dog or did it just happen?"

Maria's smile broadened as she met Will's eyes. "It does sound a little bit like that, doesn't it?"

"I'll say," Will agreed with a nod, and he turned his attention back towards the twelve-year-old. It was the first time he'd met Eve, who he knew to be Bianca di Angelo reborn. The first time he'd met the family that Nico had spoken about, had basically become a part of in the years since he'd first happened upon them. Quite by accident, really. It had saddened Will in the past that he'd never met Eve or Melissa, or Nikolas who, even in that moment, was idling before the nearby hamburger and chips shop in wait for their lunch. Really, he wished it hadn't taken so long.

As he watched, his sore smile settling upon his lips once more, Will saw Shadow. Saw him and felt his smile broaden because Eve apparently hadn't. From behind her, sneaking from the trees that ringed the centre of the clearing, he paused in lurking wait. Then, as Eve raised her voice once more with a bellowing, "Sha-dow!" he darted forwards. In a leap, a blur of black that embodied his name entirely, he sprinted across the clearing and wrapped himself around the girl. A scooping grab, a shriek from Eve, and Nico spun her into the air.

Will's smile widened further once more and he found himself chuckling at the pure joy of the scene. It was the umpteenth time such had happened that day and Will found his face protesting at the ache of muscles for simply smiling so much. It was a sight completely removed from any that he'd ever seen of Nico before, an ease and informality that he'd only ever witnessed when it was they two only in privacy, and even then this was different somehow.

Nico actually smiled, too.

Will was captivated by the sight. He had been every time he'd seen it that day. From the moment that Will and Nico had met up the Ioannidis family, Eve had been glued to his side. She truly did dote on her 'Shadow' as she'd reportedly called him since she could speak – rather aptly, Will considered, for reasons he suspected even she didn't know, let alone her parents. She was chattering away at a million miles an hour, had barely slowed her gushing words for Nico that Will couldn't even understand to greet him for the first time, since the moment they'd met. Nico had become the centre of her world. And, strangely enough, in a way that Will had never witnessed before, Nico seemed to focus entirely upon her, too.

He actually smiled. In public, and in a way that carried not a hint of sarcasm. It could have almost made Will jealous, but it didn't. Will could never think ill of anyone or anything that would make Nico smile like that. He knew only too well how horrifying it was, the prospect of never being able to see it again.

It had been six months since Echidna had been defeated. Six months since the last of the Children had been permanently vanquished, since the hounding chase, the endless searching and desperate battles had finally ended. It had been five since Will had finally begun to breathe again.

That first month – those first days of that month – had been the worst of Will's life. After he'd struggled to heal Nico in the middle of the forest, in the national park alongside Silverwater ringing with silence in the absence of fighting for their lives, Nico had nearly died. But... but he hadn't. Sometimes, even months later, Will had to reassure himself that Nico hadn't died. He would touch him, just to be assured of his solidity, that he wasn't physically fading as he had in the days after those horrible moments. He would hold him, just to assure himself that he could. He would draw in the scent of him, the taste of him, would listen to him breathe because it would remind all of his senses, not just touch and not just sight, that Nico was here. That he hadn't lost him. That his own personal sun, the light that drove away the dullness of the darkness that would be the world without him, was still here.

Not a single night had Will been able to sleep since if he didn't have Nico wrapped firmly in his arms. He'd tried, because he had to at least try, but it didn't work. He couldn't do it.

That first month had been a trial of recovery for all of them. Each suffered from their own wounds, assessed in the aftermath of Echidna's death when the eagles had been vanquished and they'd all fallen together in exhausted support. It had been a struggle to make it back to Silverwater, with Austin passing out once and half of their party needing to be carried when the strength of rushing adrenaline had faded. A distress call to Camp Half-Blood was the only way they'd made it to Long Island. Kayla and Austin hadn't been up for any healing themselves, and Will... Will couldn't do anything but hold Nico.

Percy's head was mostly healed, but it required some medical attention than the on-site doctoring that Will had administered. Reyna's shoulder wound had split open once more, and the simple occurrence of a barely healed injury springing wide had been twice as damaging as a single bout would have been. Jason had broken his arm - again - and Leo had developed a strange sparking disability with his fire from pure exhaustion loosening his flames from his control. Ambrosia and nectar, bandages and splints and Band-Aids, had been administered in excess. Camp had seen to that, just as they had all been outfitted with new clothes, cleaned properly, afforded beds. Aphrodite's cabin had taken immediately to Piper when she had clambered from her bed three days after exhausted rest to recut her hair that had somehow been half-burned to a crisp.

Hazel had been out for the count for nearly two weeks. The weight of her years of battling, of running for her life, of fighting monsters and the strain of using Stygian iron and actually killing with it and entirely robbing such powerful foes of their souls, had nearly destroyed her. Far from her decline disappearing with the cessation of the fight, it seemed as though when her body had realised she no longer needed to struggle, to fight, to survive, it simply gave up. She didn't die, though Frank had been nearly catatonic at her bedside for the entire duration of her unconsciousness. Her paleness had been starkly apparent, washed out and sickly. Even though she slept the bruises beneath her eyes only grew more pronounced.

When she'd finally awoken, the entirety of Camp Half-Blood had breathed a collective sigh of relief. None quite so loudly as Frank, however, who had been a sobbing mess for the entire day. He hadn't let Hazel do anything for herself for days afterwards, not even to lift the spoon of the broth that had been the only thing she'd been able to eat. Not until Hazel had gently scolded him with as much strength as she had been capable of. It had elicited another collective sigh from all the campers to hear her openly reprimand Frank for his behaviour.

All of them except Will, that was.

Will hadn't left Nico's side either. He'd been physically unable to leave and had barely been able to let him go for a second. He lay beside Nico in his bed to sleep and should he awaken halfway through the night for find his fingers had loosened their hold he would fall into a temporary bout of panic. Will had to hold him. He had to feel the faint pulse of a heartbeat beneath his fingers constantly to be assured it was alive. He had to feel the solidity of skin that had threatened to dissipate completely, had become little more than shadows of vapour when Will had tried to heal him. For a time, for a full three days after, Nico hadn't been quite... there. Will had never been so terrified in his entire life and each day was more terrifying than the last.

For three days he'd been faded. If Hazel had looked on death's doorstep, Nico had barely his toes still touching the land of the living. He made a corpse look healthy, was so limp that he felt almost boneless in Will's arms when he held him. Exhausted? No, Nico wasn't exhausted. He was far beyond that. Will was almost sure he'd died, that he'd passed from the mortal world and could only comfort himself that it hadn't happened because he demanded, insisted, forbade Nico from leaving and dragged him back again. Every night, every day, stretched alongside him in the bed as he grasped Nico's wrist, as he sung songs as much healing as comfort for himself, Will waited. He hoped. He prayed to every God he could name, Greek and Roman – even Hades who he still hated with a passion that he'd never felt for any God before for what he'd urged Nico and Hazel to do.

On the fourth day Nico came alive again. Not awake, for wakefulness was a long way off, but Will could actually feel him breath when he hovered a hand over his lips. He could hear it, could see the shallow rise and fall of his chest where he hadn't seen anything before. Even if it hadn't entirely erased Will's fears then it had eased them. Just slightly. He still didn't loosen his hold, though.

A whole month Nico lay as still and silent at the dead itself. During that time Will didn't leave the infirmary once. Not when he was urged to by his siblings, when he was ordered to by the elder campers who thought they had a right, who directed him to spend even ten minutes in the sun a day for he was looking 'too pale and frightfully unwell'. Will had glared at them so hard that they'd actually cowered and Will for the first time understood what it was like to be on the giving end of one of Nico's murderous stares.

"Pale? I'm pale?" He'd glared at his seventeen-year-old half-sister Janey as she visibly shrunk before him, eyes wide and shoulders hunching. "You know who else is pale? Nico. What a coincidence. Thank you for your observation, Janey. I'll keep it in mind."

Will didn't care that he'd upset her, not at that moment. No one had tried to order him outside since.

He wasn't alone in his wait. Will wasn't even the only one who clung to Nico's side unerringly. Hazel was his constant companion, and where Hazel was Frank inevitably lingered. Hazel didn't hold onto Nico all the time, not like Will did, like Will needed to, but as soon as she was able she took her place as his side. That seat had become formally dubbed 'Hazel's Seat' after that. Frank didn't try to move her. He seemed to know that she needed to remain at her brother's side. The only time she had ever left, the only time she'd disappeared for more than to use the bathroom, was when she'd visited the Underworld. She'd carried her spatha when she left, alongside Nico's Stygian sword and his knives. She'd been empty-handed when she returned and no one had spoken of it since.

The rest of their friends visited too. Percy was in the infirmary for a few days but after that decided to simply remain at Camp Half-Blood for a while, "just because". No one else left either, not Annabeth whose commitment to her work was trumped only by her loyalty to her friends, or Piper who was receiving at least one distress call from her restaurant a day. Leo and Calypso did resume their residency at Factory Bunker 9, but they were in the Hephaestus cabin as often as not. No one wanted to leave. Not until Nico...

 _He will wake. He has to wake. He won't leave me, not again_. Will told himself those words every day. He wasn't sure if he ever fully believed them, but he tried to. He had to. Otherwise he would fracture into piece once more.

Nico never actually looked any better. Whatever was going on inside of him, whatever possible healing was being undertaken that even Will couldn't feel with his natural doctor's senses, didn't have any visible effect. Not for a whole month, for thirty days exactly.

And then he woke up.

Will was lying by his side in the infirmary bed when it happened. He hadn't been sleeping because he hadn't really been able to sleep more that a light, disrupted doze for weeks. When he first felt Nico shift beside him he'd thought he was imagining it. When Nico's wrist had turned in his hand, his fingers twitching gently against Will's, he thought he might have fallen asleep and actually been dreaming. Until he felt Nico's head, rested against Will's as it was, turn and a soft sigh brush against his cheek.

"Hey."

That word was barely a whisper. Will thought he might have felt it more than actually heard it. Slowly, Will opened his eyes and drew his gaze towards Nico, almost scared to do so for fear that he might have simply been hoping so badly that he was hallucinating. Again, for it had happened more than once. But when he looked at Nico and met his dark, heavy-lidded gaze, his eyes shone with life. Exhaustion too, maybe a little haziness – or a lot of it – but most importantly there was life.

Will heard a sound like a whimper spill from his lips. A whimper or a sob and utterly pathetic, but he didn't cared. Because Nico was awake and he would make the greatest fool of himself in the world if it meant he could simply stare at him and see him. Awake. Awake at last.

"Hey," he'd replied when he could manage to catch his breath enough to force words from his tongue. It was a croak nearly as quiet as Nico's had been and thick with the tears he fought to suppress.

Slowly, with a shaking hand that looked so thin and feeble Will wondered that he could lift it at all, Nico reached up to stroke gently at Will's face. His fingers were cold but Gods, he was _alive_ and he was _moving_ and it was the best moment that Will had ever experienced in his life. Nico's bleary expression settled into a slight frown that was barely a shadow of that he usually wore. Then, in a voice barely louder than it had been before, he mumbled, "You look like shit."

Nico. It was so Nico, so wholly and heartily and completely that Will had dissolved into tears. "You're one to talk," he'd managed. Then he hadn't been able to say anything more for the heart-wrenching, blubbering sobs that gushed forwards, muffled not in the least for the squeeze he wrapped around Nico, the tuck of his head into his shoulder. He was fairly sure that he'd awoken the entire Camp. No one had objected in the least.

A week later, through sheer stubbornness, Nico rose from his bed. Another week and he was strong enough to actually leave the infirmary, if only temporarily. And a whole month following that, he and Will finally left Camp Half-Blood alongside the rest of their friends.

Four months down the track and staring across the park at Nico as he spun in place with a cackling Eve lifted in his arms, Will wouldn't have been able to tell that he had been bedridden and nearly dead not six months before. That simple fact was enough to make him smile, but it was more than that. For while Eve was bright, beautiful, young and full of life, Nico was... Nico. As beautiful as he had ever been. More so.

The paleness had completely faded from his skin, leaving it a richer, darker, more vibrant shade than it had ever been in Will's memory. He still wore black, but in the heat it was nothing but a tank top and jeans rolled to mid-calf, his lighter jacket that he still carried everywhere with him even in the height of summer discarded somewhere alongside his shoes. His hair whipped around his face, loose from any ties since he'd had it cut until it was just too short to pull back from his face. Will thought that he had done that for the sole purpose of teasing Will, who had frequently insisted that he pull it back from his face. Not that WiIl cared. He liked it just how it was. He liked Nico just how he was, so long as he was alive.

So long as he was alive.

But more than that was the life that spread across his face, dancing with a lightness that had never been there in all of Will's memory. There was a brightness to his eyes, a wideness to his smile, that hadn't been able to shine before. The weight of his duties, and before that of simply carrying his Stygian sword, had dragged upon him more than Will could ever have imagined. Now that he was free of it, it was as though he was becoming an entirely new person. Not losing the one he had been, but simply becoming... more.

Nico could be happy. Openly happy, though he still spared a scowl for anyone who looked at him sideways when he was. He could be animated, would talk to other people besides Will in public just because he wanted his opinion heard rather than simply brooding and uttering snide comments. He still frowned but it was as often a complex frown, carrying more than simply resentment, or anger, or disgruntlement, exasperation and frustration. Will was finding that every second he spend looking at Nico, at attempting to discern those expressions that surfaced, that were so Nico but also so much more, just made him fall in love with him all over again.

Will's cheeks hurt from smiling that day. They generally hurt from smiling most days, actually. It was something that his muscles could never quite grow accustomed to.

He chuckled once more as Nico swung Eve over his shoulder, dangling her upside down to shake her shrieking with laughter before taking off with her at a sprint across the clearing. He wasn't the only person who smiled; Will could make out more than a few fond glances in their direction from casual picnickers. They looked like an older brother with his little sister which, Will considered, they sort of were in all but blood.

"He's really smitten with her too," Will said.

"It goes both ways," Melissa replied. "To be honest, I thank every day the chance meeting we had in the maternity ward. If it hadn't been for my sharing of Belinda's room, we never would have met Nico at all. He's told you the story, I assume?"

Will nodded. He'd heard the story. He'd heard the true story that Melissa and Nikolas, that Eve too, apparently hadn't. They still assumed that Nico had truly been simply visiting the woman in the opposite bed to them, when in reality he had gone to see the reincarnation of his sister. Will wondered if he would ever tell them.

Turning his smile towards Nico and Eve once more – Nico was lifting her up so that she could clamber into a heavy, low-limbed tree in a way that didn't appear to concern Melissa in the slightest – he murmured quietly, "He's a pretty special person, isn't he?"

"Yes," Melissa replied simply. She was an amicable woman, and Will had enjoyed the hours he'd spent getting to know the people who had, quite realistically, become such a huge part of Nico's life. They were friendly, kind-hearted, and devoted parents, and more importantly in Will's opinion they adored Nico. Truly adored him, and were only too happy to see him. Apparently he hadn't been to see them in quite some time. Not once in the three years, which Will had found a little heart-breaking. It hadn't seemed to make much of a difference for the Ioannidis family, however. Following the momentary hysterical blubbering of Eve – before she'd turned into a gushing chatterbox, of course – and the exclamations and embraces that Melissa and Nikolas had showered upon him in clinging repetitions, it had been as though no time had passed at all. He fit their family so perfectly. It was like… like the family he didn't have.

"He's pretty smitten by you too, you know."

Will glanced towards Melissa, blinking in surprise. "Sorry?"

Melissa gave a small, faintly amused smile. "I hope I don't sound presumptuous in saying this, but I always think it's nice to hear the truth from an objective observer." She paused, tilting her head slightly to smile up at him. "I know that Nico isn't the sort of person to openly admit it himself, so I just thought it might be nice to hear."

Will stared at her mutely, even as his thoughts were awhirl. Melissa thought that? She had noticed that somehow? Nico, who was as close-lipped and guarded about displays of affection where anyone could see, had revealed that much. That would be… "Um…"

"I'm sorry, it was a little presumptuous." Melissa shook her head in faint apology. "It's just that he used to talk about you all the time. And from what I've seen, at least in the few moments Eve's let him out of her clutches, he seems only more grounded in that fact these days."

Will shook his head to clear it of a sudden light-headedness. He couldn't contain the spreading grin that caused his cheeks to ache once more but felt absolutely wonderful. "No, no, you've no need to apologise. That's… thank you, really. That's…" He paused, then smirked, glancing sidelong at Nico. "He used to talk about me a lot?"

Melissa's returning smile was faintly mischievous and Will abruptly liked her even more than he had before. "Oh, not in so many words. He didn't talk about you _specifically_ , but it was almost as though you were constantly on the edges of every thought he had. He would say things like "Will says this" or "Will does that sometimes" or "I don't like apples all that much but Will always nags me to have them". He never actually expressly came out and told us you were together but we would have to have been blind not to realise it."

Will's smile only grew wider at her words. It was like being told Nico loved him all over again – which he had done, on several instances, but always in private and with that faint blush that Will absolutely adored as much because _he_ was the only one who would see it as anything else. He turned his gaze back towards Nico. His Nico, who seemed to glow in the midday light even in the shadows of the tree as he stood beneath with his arms folded, eyes upturned to Eve as she swung like a monkey through the boughs. As though feeling the weight of Will's eyes upon him, he glanced their direction. The smile already upon his lips became a smirk and he actually winked as though sharing something with Will, some unspoken message.

Will didn't know what that message was exactly but he didn't really care. He could stare at Nico all day, listen to him talk for hours if he wanted to and not hear a word of it simply to be around him. "He isn't the only one."

"The only what?" Melissa asked.

"The only one who's smitten," Will replied. He wasn't ashamed to admit the truth. Not in the least. He was head over heels in love, and he doubted there would be a time when he ever wasn't.

He could feel Melissa's affectionate smile turned towards him. "Yes, I can see that. You two are just about perfect for each other then, aren't you?"

Will only nodded in reply. He would never think anything other. _Perfect for one another_. Maybe 'perfect' was too strong a word – neither Will nor Nico ever claimed to be without flaws, and the arguments that arose from anger as much as friendly banter between them erased any such illusions of flawlessness. But they were perfect enough.

Nico was Will's light. He always would be.

* * *

"Bye, Shadow! Don't leave for so long again or I'm going to really come looking for you this time!"

Nico waved in farewell as Eve swung her arm wildly over her head, walking backwards between her parents as they left for the afternoon. Melissa and Nikolas grinned as they glanced from her and back to Nico, their unspoken agreement with their daughter entirely apparent. "I won't," he called back. "I swear I'm not going to leave again."

His reply seemed to satisfy Eve, for she nodded curtly and actually allowed Nikolas to turn her around to watch where she was going. That in itself was a feat, given that Eve was at least as stubborn as Bianca had always been. Perhaps even then some.

"She really adores you," Will said from his side as they turned to leave. He slung an arm easily around Nico's shoulders with utter casualness and assuredness.

"The feeling's mutual," Nico replied. The he flicked a glance towards Will's fingers and raised a pointed eyebrow. "Must you? You realise how hot it is today?"

Will only smiled in reply. "I must," was all he said, and Nico, though he sighed and rolled his eyes, couldn't bring himself to shrug him off.

Will had been practically glowing all afternoon for some reason. When they'd eaten lunch, Nico had been convinced that he'd never eaten more burger and chips in his life. As they'd walked along the beach, Eve dragging Nico onto his knees to help build sandcastles or along the rock pools to peer inside for starfish and octopus, he'd joined them and appeared just as enthusiastic as Eve was. And when they'd finally said farewell to the Ioannidis family, he had embraced each of the three as tightly as they'd let him. Which, if Nico knew the family as well as he once had, was almost painfully tight. He considered that Eve might have added a new favourite to her collection.

"You've been particularly happy this afternoon," Nico finally said. "Why?"

"Is it a crime to be happy?" Will asked, flashing his wide, sunshine-grin in Nico's direction. It was blinding.

"Do you mind?"

"Mind what?"

"Turn your glow off, please. Honestly, we're in public."

"I'm not glowing," Will said, smile and sunshine only growing more vibrant. "It must just be my natural brightness. Or maybe how you perceive me?"

"Natural brightness? Got tickets on yourself have you?"

"I notice you don't refute my other suggestion."

Nico only rolled his eyes once more. He'd let Will have that one because… because he couldn't really be bothered to argue it. Besides, it was true. Nico always saw Will as being bright. Even in the moments after he'd first awoken months ago, when Will truly had looked absolutely terrible, he'd been as radiant as the sun. Simply being in Will's presence had been soothing and warm. Healing, just like Will always had been. Nico attributed the speed of his recovery entirely to Will's constant accompaniment. In private, of course. Only to himself. Really, it had been so extreme, his clinginess that Nico couldn't quite say he disliked so constant, that he hadn't even wanted to go back to work. Nico had heard him muttering something about actually quitting at one point.

That was when he called Naomi. Suffice to say, the powerful command and no-nonsense attitude of a mother was indeed a terrible and extraordinary thing. Will had caved beneath her scolding – he'd been working back at New York Presbyterian for three months now.

They were all slowly getting back onto their feet. Not just Nico and Will, but all of their friends. Slowly, gradually, they were climbing back into their old lives. Hazel had joined Frank in his fieldwork, with as much of a desire to be joined to him at the hip as he was to her. Jason went back to college and Piper to her restaurant – she was thinking of opening up a second to Annabeth's delight in that of course _she_ would be the one to design it. Percy had recently taken up a job as a surf lifesaver, much to the apparent distress of his three other employers still vying for his time and attention, while Leo and Calypso had quite readily burst into their engineering inventions with renewed spirit. Both Kayla and Austin had returned to their past endeavours with just as much alacrity, Austin at times helping out at the archery school Kayla had opened when he wasn't focusing on his new album.

And while Thalia went back to her Hunters, Reyna stayed behind. She lived with Nico and Will as a sort of cohabitant in Will's Manhattan apartment, and surprisingly her presence actually brought Thalia to New York City on occasion. It was strange that, considering how often they had butted heads, they actually seemed remarkably fond of one another. It reminded Nico of himself and Will a little, actually. Or at least how they used to be.

Will had still expressed his reluctance to leave Nico even for only his work hours, and Nico had found that, though he seemed to have grown more accustomed to Will's clinginess, that clinginess seemed to have redoubled as though to make up for their years apart. Which was how Nico found himself doing IT and general odd programming jobs around the hospital, jobs that were cropping up with increasing frequency when his casual supervisors realised he actually knew what he was doing. It was volunteering mostly, or at least it had been at first until Naomi had heard about it, declared that he was doing far too much to simply be classed a volunteer, and had jumped on the case. He now spent nearly as much time at the hospital as Will, for which Will was thoroughly satisfied.

Nico wouldn't admit it but though he objected to Will's clinginess on general principle against sappiness, he found it calming to be around him. He was quite satisfied with the work he was doing at the hospital, simply because he found time to spend with Will whenever their breaks coincided or even sometimes when they didn't. Surprisingly little objection was made when Nico just happened to wander alongside Will when he was doing his rounds. Far from distracting him, the fellow residents that Nico had spoken to actually said that it helped him work better. That he wasn't quite as 'distracted', even though a very evident distraction was right beside him. Besides, Will was a good enough worker that making him happy was something that people simply tended to strive for.

Will withheld from looping his arm around Nico's shoulders at the hospital, which seemed to be his most comfortable position only _always._ Which was at least part of the reason that Nico found he couldn't object too much about him doing so in that moment.

"What were you talking to Melissa about so much today? I think even Nikolas was a little put out that she seemed to be so engaged with you."

Suspiciously, Will only shrugged and waved the question aside. "Just things."

"Things?"

"Yes, things. She's a very interesting person, you know."

"Of course I know that," Nico said. "I've known her for twelve years."

"Yeah, I know. They really love you. All of them."

"Are you complimenting me?" Nico asked, raising a slightly confused eyebrow.

Will shrugged again as he steered them down the street along the path towards the shops rather than continuing along the beachfront. "Just stating a fact as I see it, actually."

"Then… thank you, I guess."

"Wow."

"What?"

Will smirked. "You said 'thank you' in public."

His efforts earned him a sharp jab in the ribs with Nico's elbow. His breath gushed out in a heave but Will only chuckled, not even dropping his arm from Nico's shoulders as he grabbed at his side with his other. "You've got a mean point to your stupid, bony elbow, has anyone told you?"

Nico smiled. "Of course I do. I practice on you all the time."

Will only laughed and, turning to raise his hand other arm, wrapped it around Nico to draw them chest to chest. They had to pause in step for the tightness of the hug Will shrouded him in. Nico considered objecting but… no, he couldn't really be bothered. Even hot and slightly sticky for the heat that Will was, he didn't really feel like shrugging him off. Will had indeed been exceptionally clingy in recent months – understandably, Nico had to admit – but Nico considered it might fade eventually. Maybe. He wasn't sure if he would be relieved or saddened by the fact.

"I love you, you know," Will murmured, leaning into his ear.

Nico snorted, tugging on the neck of Will's t-shirt in faint reprimand. He looped a finger around the necklace Will wore tucked into it absently, as he'd found himself making a habit of doing recently. Will said he wore the Colchian Dragon tooth pendant strung upon it as a good luck charm. "If you're trying to get me to reply in kind here and now, you're wasting your time."

"I know," Will said cheerfully, only holding Nico tighter. He dropped his chin to his shoulder and hummed slightly. "Just wanted you to know."

"Sap."

"Definitely. But… _sei la ragione per cui vivo. Per cui ogni giorno sorrido_." And as if to prove the truth of his words Nico felt the tug of his smile spreading in the press of his lips against his neck.

Nico couldn't help but roll his eyes, even as his own smile accidentally, uncontrollably, stretched across his face. Nico was Will's reason for living? The reason he smiled? Unforgivably, ridiculously, horrendously sappy, but Nico was just as bad because it actually felt warmth well within him at the words.

"You're an idiot," he said. "And your cliché phrases are appallingly accented."

Will's smile – his smile for Nico – only broadened where his lips pressed against his skin. "You love it."

"Actually, I don't." _Of course I do_.

"I taught them to myself. Aren't you proud of me?"

"Not in the slightest. You're doing an appalling job." _It's adorable that you're trying, and I love it._

Will heard his unspoken words. Nico knew he did. He didn't reply but to draw them closer together in an intimacy that was probably far too extreme for the middle of a boardwalk. As he drew his head from Nico's shoulder to meet his gaze, Nico was quite literally assaulted by a smile that actually glowed and likely would have forbidden objection from anyone who sought to voice any. Nico found it horribly embarrassing, but he couldn't object. That forbiddance applied to him too.

Instead, he leaned towards Will and, quite removed from what he would have once been more than disinclined to do, curled his fingers around the back of his head and drew them into a brief, chaste kiss. He could feel Will's smile and it was just as warm to touch as it looked.

" _Ti amo_ , _idiota_."

"I love you too."


End file.
